area handbook series 

India 

a country study 




India 

a country study 



Federal Research Division 
Library of Congress 
Edited by 
James Heitzman and 
Robert L. Worden 
Research Completed 
September 1995 




^ ^ ^ 4% 



On the cover: The peafowl, or peacock (P. cristatus), the 
national bird of India, is protected under the Indian 
Wild Life Protection Act of 1972. A traditional fixture 
in literature, folklore, legends, and art, the peafowl 
inhabits most of peninsular India, Jammu and Kash- 
mir, eastern Assam, and southern Mizoram. Art of 
this type is found in parts of Uttar Pradesh and Rajas- 
than and is based on traditional paper stencil art 
(sanzi khaka) used on festive occasions for floor deco- 
rations employing marble dust and colored powders. 
From the Dover Pictorial Archive Series; used with 
permission of Dover Publications. 



Fifth Edition, First Printing, 1996. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

India : a country study / Federal Research Division, Library 
of Congress ; edited by James Heitzman and Robert L. 
Worden. — 5th ed. 

p. cm. — (Area handbook series, ISSN 1057-5294) 
(DA Pam; 550-21) 

"Supersedes the 1985 edition of India : a country study, 
edited by Richard F. Nyrop." — T.p. verso. 

"Research completed September 1995." 

Includes bibliographical references (pp. 671-785) and 
index. 

ISBN 0-8444-0833-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 
1. India. I. Heitzman, James, 1950- . II. Worden, 
Robert L., 1945- . III. Library of Congress. Federal 
Research Division. IV. Series. V. Series: DA pam ; 550—21. 
DS407.I4465 1996 96-19266 
954__dc20 CIP 



Headquarters, Department of the Army 
DA Pam 550-21 



For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office 
Washington, D.C. 20402 



Foreword 



This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared 
by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress 
under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program spon- 
sored by the Department of the Army. The last two pages of this 
book list the other published studies. 

Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign coun- 
try, describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and 
national security systems and institutions, and examining the 
interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are 
shaped by historical and cultural factors. Each study is written 
by a multidisciplinary team of social scientists. The authors 
seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, 
striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular 
attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, 
their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common inter- 
ests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and 
extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their 
attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and 
political order. 

The books represent the analysis of the authors and should 
not be construed as an expression of an official United States 
government position, policy, or decision. The authors have 
sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. 
Corrections, additions, and suggestions for changes from read- 
ers will be welcomed for use in future editions. 

Louis R. Mortimer 
Chief 

Federal Research Division 
Library of Congress 
Washington, DC 20540-4840 



iii 



Acknowledgments 



The authors wish to thank individuals in various agencies of 
the Indian and United States governments and private institu- 
tions who gave their time, research materials, and special 
knowledge to provide information and perspective. These indi- 
viduals include Hardeep Puri, Joint Secretary (America) of the 
Ministry of External Affairs; Madhukar Gupta, Joint Secretary 
(Kashmir) of the Ministry of Home Affairs; Bimla Bhalla, 
Director General of Advertising and Visual Publications, Minis- 
try of Information and Broadcasting; Amulya Ratna Nanda, 
Registrar General of India; Ashok Jain, director of the National 
Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies; T. 
Vishwanthan, director of the Indian National Scientific Docu- 
mentation Centre; G.P. Phondke, director of the Publications 
and Information Directorate of the Council for Scientific and 
Industrial Research; Air Commander Jasjit Singh, director of 
the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses; G. Madhavan, 
deputy executive secretary of the Indian Academy of Sciences; 
Sivaraj Ramaseshan, distinguished emeritus professor, Raman 
Research Institute; H.S. Nagaraja, public relations officer of 
the Indian Institute of Science; Virendra Singh, director of the 
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; Bhabani Sen Gupta of 
the Centre for Policy Research; Pradeep Mehendiratta, Vice 
President and Executive Director, Indian Institute of American 
Studies; and Richard J. Crites, Chat Blakeman, Peter L.M. Hey- 
demann, and Marcia S.B. Bernicat of the United States 
Embassy in New Delhi. Special thanks go to Lygia M. Ballan- 
tyne, director, and Alice Kniskern, deputy director, and the 
staff of the Library of Congress New Delhi Field Office, particu- 
larly Atish Chatterjee, for supplying bounteous amounts of 
valuable research materials on India and arranging interviews 
of Indian government officials. 

Appreciation is also extended to Ralph K. Benesch, who for- 
merly oversaw the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program 
for the Department of the Army, and to the desk officers in the 
Department of State and the Department of the Army who 
reviewed the chapters. Thanks also are offered to William A. 
Blanpied, Mavis Bowen, Ainslie T. Embree, Jerome Jacobson, 
Suzanne Hanchett, Barbara Leitch LePoer, Owen M. Lynch, 



v 



and Sunalini Nayudu, who either assisted with substantive 
information or read parts of the manuscript or did both. 

The authors also wish to thank those who contributed 
directly to the preparation of the manuscript. They include 
Sandra W. Meditz, who reviewed all textual and graphic materi- 
als, served as liaison with the Department of the Army, and pro- 
vided numerous substantive and technical contributions; 
Sheila Ross, who edited the chapters; Andrea T. Merrill, who 
edited the tables and figures; Marilyn Majeska, who supervised 
editing and managed production; Alberta Jones King, who 
assisted with research, making wordprocessing corrections to 
various versions of the manuscript, and proofreading; Barbara 
Edgerton and Izella Watson, who performed the final wordpro- 
cessing; Maria D. Woodson, who assisted with proofreading; 
and Janie L. Gilchrist, David P. Cabitto, Barbara Edgerton, and 
Izella Watson, who prepared the camera-ready copy. Catherine 
Schwartzstein performed the final prepublication editorial 
review, and Joan C. Cook compiled the index. 

Graphics support was provided by David P. Cabitto, who 
oversaw the production of maps and graphics and, with the 
assistance of Wayne Home, designed the cover and the illustra- 
tions on the chapter title pages; and Harriet Blood and Mary- 
land Mapping and Graphics, who assisted in the preparation of 
the maps and charts. Thanks also go to Gary L. Fitzpatrick and 
Christine M. Anderson, of the Library of Congress Geography 
and Map Division, for assistance in preparing early map drafts. 
Avery special thank you goes to Janice L. Hyde, who did the 
research on and selection of cover and title-page illustrations 
and photographs, translated some of the photograph captions 
and textual references, and helped the editors on numerous 
matters of substance and analysis. Shantha S. Murthy of the 
Library of Congress Serial Record Division provided Indian 
language assistance. Clarence Maloney helped identify the sub- 
jects of some of the photographs. 

Finally the authors acknowledge the generosity of individ- 
uals and public and private organizations who allowed their 
photographs to be used in this study. They have been acknowl- 
edged in the illustration captions. 



vi 



Contents 



Page 

Foreword iii 

Acknowledgments v 

Preface xvii 

Table A. Selected Acronyms, Abbreviations, and 

Full Party Names xix 

Table B. Chronology of Important Events xxi 

Country Profile xxv 

Introduction xxxv 

Chapter 1. Historical Setting 1 

John J. Paul 

ANTECEDENTS 4 

Harappan Culture 4 

Vedic Aryans 5 

KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES 8 

The Mauryan Empire 9 

The Deccan and the South 11 

THE CLASSICAL AGE 12 

Gupta and Harsha 12 

The Southern Rivals 14 

THE DELHI SULTANATE 15 

The Coming of Islam 15 

Southern Dynasties 17 

THE MUGHAL ERA 19 

The Mughals 19 

The Marathas 26 

The Sikhs 27 

The Coming of the Europeans 27 

THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA 30 

Company Rule, 1757-1857 30 

The British Raj, 1858-1947 35 

vii 



THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT 38 

Origins of the Congress and the Muslim League ... 38 

War, Reforms, and Agitation 40 

Mahatma Gandhi 41 

Political Impasse and Independence 45 

INDEPENDENT INDIA 46 

National Integration 46 

Nehru's Legacy 50 

The Rise of Indira Gandhi 51 

Rajiv Gandhi 55 

Chapter 2. Geographic and Demographic 

Setting 61 

Karl E. Ryavec 

GEOGRAPHY 64 

Principal Regions 64 

Rivers 74 

Climate 76 

Earthquakes 81 

POPULATION 81 

Structure and Dynamics 81 

Population Projections 88 

Population and Family Planning Policy 89 

HEALTH 94 

Health Conditions 94 

Health Care 99 

EDUCATION 103 

Administration and Funding. 103 

Primary and Secondary Education 105 

Colleges and Universities 108 

Education and Society 110 

Chapter 3. Religious Life 117 

James Heitzman 

THE ROOTS OF INDIAN RELIGION 121 

The Vedas and Polytheism 121 

Karma and Liberation 122 

THE MONASTIC PATH 1 25 

Jainism 125 

Buddhism 128 

The Tradition of the Enlightened Master 132 



viii 



THE WORSHIP OF PERSONAL GODS 133 

Vishnu 135 

Shiva 138 

Brahma and the Hindu Trinity 140 

The Goddess 141 

Local Deities 143 

THE CEREMONIES OF HINDUISM 145 

Domestic Worship 145 

Life-Cycle Rituals 146 

Public Worship 148 

ISLAM 155 

Origins and Tenets 155 

Islamic Traditions in South Asia 158 

SIKHISM 162 

Early History and Tenets 162 

Twentieth-Century Developments 166 

OTHER MINORITY RELIGIONS 167 

Tribal Religions 167 

Christianity 169 

Zoroastrianism 171 

Judaism 173 

MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS 1 74 

Chapter 4. Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism ... 179 

Allen W. Thrasher 

LINGUISTIC RELATIONS 181 

Diversity, Use, and Policy 181 

Languages of India 1 85 

Hindi and English 187 

Linguistic States 194 

The Social Context of Language 197 

ETHNIC MINORITIES 199 

Tribes 199 

Descendants of Foreign Groups 211 

REGIONALISM 214 

Telangana Movement 214 

Jharkhand Movement 218 

Uttarakhand 221 

Gorkhaland 223 

Ladakh 226 

The Northeast 226 

ix 



Outlook 228 

Chapter 5. Social Systems 231 

Doranne Jacobson 

THEMES IN INDIAN SOCIETY 234 

Hierarchy 234 

Purity and Pollution 235 

Social Interdependence 240 

FAMILY AND KINSHIP 241 

Family Ideals 241 

Variations in Family Structure 243 

Large Kinship Groups 244 

Family Authority and Harmony 247 

Veiling and the Seclusion of Women 248 

Life Passages 251 

CASTE AND CLASS 266 

Varna, Caste, and Other Divisions 266 

Intercaste Relations 272 

Changes in the Caste System 273 

Classes 276 

The Fringes of Society 279 

THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY 281 

Settlement and Structure 281 

Village Unity and Divisiveness 283 

URBAN LIFE 285 

The Growth of Cities 285 

Urban Inequities 286 

Cities as Centers 290 

FUTURE TRENDS 292 

Chapter 6. Character and Structure of the Economy 295 

John D. Rogers 

STRUCTURE OF THE ECONOMY 298 

Independence to 1979 298 

Growth since 1980 299 

Liberalization in the Early 1990s 302 

THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT 304 

Early Policy Developments 304 

Antipoverty Programs 307 

Development Planning 309 

FINANCE 312 

x 



Budget 313 

Fiscal Administration 315 

Monetary Process 316 

FOREIGN ECONOMIC RELATIONS 318 

Aid 318 

Trade 321 

Foreign-Exchange System 323 

External Debt 324 

LABOR 325 

Size and Composition of the Work Force 325 

Labor Relations 327 

INDUSTRY 328 

Government Policies 329 

Manuf ac tur i ng 331 

Construction 335 

Energy 335 

Mining and Quarrying 341 

TRANSPORTATION 342 

Railroads 345 

Rapid Transit 346 

The Road System 349 

Motor Vehicles 350 

Ports, Maritime Transportation, and Inland 

Waterways 350 

Civil Aviation 352 

TELECOMMUNICATIONS 354 

National Policy 354 

Telephone 355 

Radio 356 

Television 356 

TOURISM 357 

Robert L. Worden 

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 358 

Origin and Development 358 

Infrastructure and Government Role 363 

Resource Allocation 365 

Major Research Organizations 368 

Prospects in Science and Technology 376 

Chapter 7. Agriculture 379 

Ashok Bhargava 



XI 



LAND USE 383 

Himalayas 383 

Indo-Gangetic Plain 384 

Peninsular India 385 

LAND TENURE 386 

Landholding Categories 386 

Land Reform 388 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 391 

Evolution of Policy 391 

Development Programs 393 

PRODUCTION 404 

Crop Output 404 

The Green Revolution 410 

LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY 412 

FORESTRY 413 

FISHING 415 

AGRICULTURAL CREDIT 418 

AGRICULTURAL TAXATION 421 

MARKETING, TRADE, AND AID 421 

Marketing and Marketing Services 421 

External Trade 424 

External Aid 426 

IMPACT OF ECONOMIC REFORMS ON AGRICUL- 
TURE 427 

Chapter 8. Government and Politics 429 

John Echeverri-Gent 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK 432 

Fundamental Rights 434 

Directive Principles of State Policy 435 

Group Rights 436 

Emergency Provisions and Authoritarian 

Powers 438 

THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT 441 

The Legislature 441 

The Executive 446 

The Judiciary 449 

Election Commission 454 

State Governments and Territories 455 

Local Government 458 

The Civil Service 461 

xii 



THE POLITICAL PROCESS 462 

Elections 462 

Political Parties 463 

Political Issues 491 

Corruption and the Anti-Establishment Vote 498 

THE MEDIA 499 

The Press 499 

Broadcast Media 501 

THE RISE OF CIVIL SOCIETY 503 

Chapter 9. Foreign Relations 507 

Roxane D.V. Sismanidis 

FOREIGN POLICY FORMULATION 511 

Role of the Prime Minister 511 

Ministry of External Affairs 512 

Other Government Organizations 514 

The Role of Political and Interest Groups 515 

DETERMINANTS OF FOREIGN RELATIONS 516 

Historical Legacy 516 

Security Perceptions 516 

Nonalignment 518 

OVERVIEW OF FOREIGN RELATIONS 519 

South Asia 519 

China 531 

Southeast Asia 536 

Middle East 537 

Central Asia 540 

Russia 541 

United States 546 

Britain, Australia, Canada, Western Europe, and 

Japan 553 

PARTICIPATION IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZA- 
TIONS 555 

United Nations 555 

Commonwealth of Nations 556 

Nonaligned Movement 557 

South Asian Association for Regional Coopera- 
tion 559 

Chapter 10. National Security 561 

S umit Ganguly 



xiii 



COLONIAL-ERA DEVELOPMENTS 565 

Company Armies 565 

The Indian Military under the British Raj 566 

POSTINDEPENDENCE DEVELOPMENTS 569 

The National Forces 569 

The Experience of Wars 570 

Peacekeeping Operations 576 

NATIONAL SECURITY STRUCTURE 579 

Civil-Military Relations 579 

Defense Spending 581 

ORGANIZATION AND EQUIPMENT OF THE ARMED 

FORCES 583 

The Army 583 

The Navy 587 

The Air Force 590 

Recruitment and Training 591 

Conditions of Service 594 

Uniforms, Ranks, and Insignia 595 

Paramilitary and Reserve Forces 598 

Space and Nuclear Programs 601 

Intelligence Services 602 

Military Justice 604 

PUBLIC ORDER AND INTERNAL SECURITY 605 

Military Role Expansion 605 

Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and the Armed 

Forces 606 

Insurgent Movements and External Subversion .... 607 

LAW ENFORCEMENT . 612 

National-Level Agencies 612 

State and Other Police Services 613 

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM 616 

Criminal Law and Procedure 616 

The Penal System 618 

NATIONAL SECURITY CHALLENGES 619 

Appendix. Tables 623 

Bibliography 671 

Glossary 787 

Index 797 

xiv 



Contributors 847 

List of Figures 

1 Administrative Divisions of India, 1995 xxxiv 

2 Indus Valley Culture Sites, ca. 2500-1600 B.C 6 

3 Mughal Empire, Late Seventeenth Century 22 

4 British Indian Empire, 1947 48 

5 Topography and Drainage 66 

6 Rainfall 80 

7 Temperature 84 

8 Population by Age and Sex, 1990 and 2000 86 

9 Principal Languages by State and Union 

Territory 190 

10 Major Industrial and Energy Activity, 1995 334 

11 Major Minerals, 1995 344 

12 Transportation System, 1995 348 

13 Major Agricultural Activity, 1995 406 

14 Structure of the Government, 1995 442 

15 Evolution of Major Political Parties, 1885-1994 

(Simplified) 464 

16 National Security Structure, 1995 582 

17 Area Commands of the Army, Navy, and Air 

Force, 1995 586 

18 Officer Ranks and Insignia, 1995 596 

19 Enlisted and Junior Noncommissioned Officer 

Ranks and Insignia, 1995 597 



xv 



Preface 



This edition supersedes the fourth edition of India: A Coun- 
try Study, published in 1985 under the editorship of Richard F. 
Nyrop. The new edition provides updated information on the 
world's second most populous and fastest-growing nation. 
Although much of India's traditional behavior and organiza- 
tional dynamics reported in 1985 have remained the same, 
internal and regional events have continued to shape Indian 
domestic and international policies. 

To the extent possible, place-names used in the text conform 
to the United States Board on Geographic Names, but equal 
weight has been given to spellings provided by the official Sur- 
vey of India. Selected acronyms and abbreviations are clarified 
in Table A, and a Chronology covering the long span of Indian 
history is given in Table B; both of these tables appear in the 
front of the book. Measurements are given in the metric sys- 
tem; a conversion table is provided to assist readers unfamiliar 
with metric measurements (see table 1, Appendix). 

Users of this book are encouraged to consult the chapter 
bibliographies at the end of the book. They include several 
general and specialized bibliographies that will lead readers to 
further resources on India. Additionally, users may wish to con- 
sult the annual editions of the Association for Asian Studies' 
Bibliography of Asian Studies, as well as later editions of year- 
books listed in the bibliography of this volume. Other biblio- 
graphic sources of interest are N. Gerald Barrier's India and 
America: American Publishing on India, 1930-1985 (New Delhi: 
American Institute of Indian Studies, 1986) and David Nelson's 
Bibliography of South Asia (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 
1994). Those who read Indian classical and vernacular lan- 
guages will find publications available in those languages in the 
Library of Congress and other major research libraries. 

The illustrations on the cover and chapter title pages repre- 
sent a variety of contemporary folk-art motifs from various 
parts of India. 

The body of the text reflects information available as of Sep- 
tember 1, 1995. Certain other portions of the text, however, 
have been updated. The Introduction discusses significant 
events that have occurred since the completion of research; the 
Country Profile includes updated information as available; and 



xvii 



the Bibliography lists recently published sources thought to be 
particularly helpful to the reader. 



xviii 



Table A. Selected Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Full Party 
Names 



Acronym or Abbreviation Organization or Term 



ABSU All Bodo Students' Union 

AGP Asom Gana Parishad (Assam People's Assembly) 

AIADMK All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (All-India Anna 

Dravidian Progressive Federation) 

AIDS acquired immune deficiency syndrome 

ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations (see Glossary) 

ASLV Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle 

Arabsat Arab Satellite Communication Organization 

BAMCEF All-India Backward, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other 
Backward Classes, and Minority Communities Employees 
Federation 

BJP Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party) 

BKD Bharatiya Krand Dal 

BLD Bharatiya Lok Dal (Indian People Party) 

BPAC Bodo People's Acdon Committee 

BSP Bahujan Samaj Party (Party of Society's Majority) 

ca. circa 

CCN Cable News Network 

CFD Congress for Democracy 

Congress Indian National Congress 

Congress (I) Congress (Indira) 

Congress (O) Congress (Organisation) 

Congreess (R) Congress (Requisition) 

Congress (S) Congress (Socialist and Secular) 

Congress (U) Congress (Urs) 

CPI Comm unist Party of India 

CPI (M) Communist Party of India (Marxist) 

CPI (M-L) Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) 

CSIR Council of Scientific and Industrial Research 

DK Dravida Kazhagam (Dravidian Federation) 

DMK Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Dravidian Progressive Federa- 

tion) 

DMKP Dalit Mazdoor Kisan Party (Oppressed Workers' and Peasants' 

Party) 

DNA deoxyribonucleic acid 

DRDO Defence Research and Development Organisation 

ESCAP Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific of the 

UN (q.v.) 

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization (see Glossary) of the UN 

(q.v.) 

FY fiscal year (see Glossary) 

GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 

GDP gross domestic product (see Glossary) 



xix 



Table A. (Continued) Selected Acronyms, Abbreviations, and Full 

Party Names 



Acronym or Abbreviation Organization or Term 



GNP gross national product (see Glossary) 

GSLV Geostationary Launch Vehicle 

HIV human immunodeficiency virus 

IIT Indian Institute of Technology 

IMF International Monetary Fund (see Glossary) 

INA Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) 

INS Indian Naval Ship 

Insat Indian National Satellite System 

Intelsat International Telecommunications Satellite Organization 

IFF Indian People's Front 

IPKF Indian Peace Keeping Force 

ISRO Indian Space Research Organisation 

Jana Sangh People's Union 

Janata Janata Party 

Janata Dal People's Party 

Lok Dal People Party 

LITE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 

NISTADS National Institute of Science, Technology, and Development 
Studies 

OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (see Glos- 
sary) 

PSLV polar satellite launch vehicle 

PSP Praja Socialist Party 

r. reigned 

RSS Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organisa- 
tion) 

SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (see Glos- 
sary) 

Samajwadi Samajwadi Party (Socialist Party) 

Samajwadi Janata Socialist People's Party 

SSP Samyukta Socialist Party 

Swatantra Swatantra Party 

Telugu Desam Telugu National Party 

ULFA United Liberation Front of Assam 

UN United Nations 

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza- 
tion 

UNDP United Nations Development Programme 

VHP Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) 

VSTOL vertical and short takeoff and landing 

WHO World Health Organization 



XX 



Table B. Chronology of Important Events 



Period 



Description 



ANCIENT EMPIRES 
ca. 2500-1600 B.C. 
ca. 1500-500 B.C. 
ca. 1000 B.C. 
ca. 563-ca. 483 B.C. 

ca. 326-184 B.C. 

ca. 180 B.C.-A.D. 150 
ca. AD. 320-550 
606-47 
711 

750-1150 
1150-1202 
GROWTH OF ISLAM 
997-1027 

1202 

1206-1398 
1398 
1414-50 
1451-1526 
THE MUGHAL PERIOD 
1526 

1556-1605 

1605-27 

1628-58 
1658-1707 
1707-1858 
BRITISH PERIOD 
1757 

1835 

1857-58 

1858 



1885 



Indus Valley culture. 

Migrations of Aryan-speaking tribes; the Vedic Age. 

Settlement of Bengal by Dravidian-speaking peoples. 

Life of Siddartha Gautama — the Buddha; founding 
of Buddhism. 

Mauryan Empire; reign of Ashoka (269-232 B.C.); 
spread of Buddhism. 

Shaka dynasties in Indus Valley. 

Gupta Empire; classical age in North India. 

North Indian empire of Harsha. 

Arab invaders conquer Sindh, establish Islamic pres- 
ence in India. 

Pala Dynasty. 

Sena Dynasty. 

Mahmud of Ghazni raids Indian subcontinent from 
Afghanistan. 

Turkish conquerors defeat Sena Dynasty and over- 
run Bengal. 

Delhi Sultanate. 

Timur sacks Delhi. 

Sayyid Dynasty, renewal of Delhi Sultanate. 
Lodi Dynasty. 

Babur lays foundation of Mughal Empire; wins First 
Battle of Panipat. 

Akbar expands and reforms the empire; Mughals 
win Second Battle of Panipat. 

Reign of Jahangir; in 1612 East India Company 
opens first trading post (factory). 

Reign of Shah Jahan. 

Reign of Aurangzeb, last great Mughal ruler. 
Lesser emperors; decline of the Mughal Empire. 

Battle of Plassey — British victory over Mughal forces 
in Bengal; British rule in India begins. 

Institution of British education and other reform 
measures. 

Revolt of Indian sepoys (soldiers) against East India 
Company. 

East India Company dissolved; rule of India under 
the British crown — the British Raj — begins with 
Government of India Act; formal end of Mughal 
Empire. 

Indian National Congress (Congress) formed. 



xxi 



Table B. ( Continued) Chronology of Important Events 



Period 



Description 



1905 

1906 
1909 

1912 

1916 

1919 

1935 
1940 

August 16, 1946 
INDEPENDENT INDIA 
August 15, 1947 



August 15, 1947-May27, 1964 

October 22, 1947-January 1, 1949 

January 30, 1948 

October 20-November 21, 1962 

June 9, 1964-January 11, 1966 

August 5-September 23, 1965 
January 24, 1966-March 24, 1977 

December 3-16, 1971 

June 25, 1975-January 18, 1977 
March 24, 1977-July 28, 1979 

July 28, 1979-January 14, 1980 
January 14, 1980-October 31, 1984 
October 31, 1984 



Partition of Bengal into separate provinces of East- 
ern Bengal and Assam, West Bengal. 

All-India Muslim League (Muslim League) founded. 

Morley-Minto Reforms; separate electorates for Mus- 
lims. 

Partition of Bengal annulled; new province of Bihar 
and Orissa formed; plans to move capital from 
Calcutta to Delhi announced. 

Congress-League Scheme of Reforms (often 
referred to as Lucknow Pact) signed. 

Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms; Government of India 
Act. 

Government of India Act of 1935. 

Muslim League adopts Lahore Resoludon; "Two 
Nations" theory articulated by Muslim League 
leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah and others. 

"Direct Acdon Day" of Muslim League. 

Partition of British India; India achieves indepen- 
dence and incorporates West Bengal and Assam; 
Jawaharlal Nehru becomes prime minister of 
India. Pakistan is created and incorporates East 
Bengal (the East Wing, or East Pakistan) and ter- 
ritory in the northwest (the West Wing, or West 
Pakistan); Jinnah becomes governor general of 
Pakistan. 

Jawaharlal Nehru serves as prime minister and 
leader of Congress-controlled government. 

Undeclared war with Pakistan; ends with United 
Nations-arranged ceasefire. 

Mahatma Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi. 

Border war with China. 

Lai Bhadur Shastri serves as prime minister of Con- 
gress-led government. 

Second war with Pakistan. 

Indira Gandhi serves as prime minister for first time, 
head of government initially led by Congress, 
later Congress (R). 

Third war with Pakistan; Bangladesh becomes inde- 
pendent following Indian invasion of East Paki- 
stan. 

State of Emergency proclaimed by Indira Gandhi. 

Morarji Desai serves as prime minister as head of a 
multiparty front, Janata Party, India's first non- 
Congress government. 

Chaudhury Charan Singh serves as prime minister as 
head of a Janata-led coalition government. 

Indira Ganhdi serves as prime minister for second 
time, head of Congress (I) government. 

Indira Gandhi assassinated in New Delhi. 



Table B. ( Continued) Chronology of Important Events 



Period 



Description 



October 31, 1984-December 2, 
1989 

December 2, 1989-November 7, 
1990 

November 10, 1990-June 20, 1991 



May 21, 1991 

June 20, 1991-Mayl5, 1996 
December 6, 1992 
January-March 1993 

May 1995 

April 27-May 7, 1996 
May 15-28, 1996 

June 1, 1996 



Rajiv Gandhi serves as prime minister of Congress 
(I)-led government. 

Vishwanath Pratap Singh serves as prime minister of 
National Front-led coalition government. 

Chandra Shekhar serves as prime minister, heading 
S am ajwadi Janata Party government. 

Rajiv Gandhi assassinated near Madras. 

P.V. Narasimha Rao serves as prime minister of Con- 
gress (I)-led government. 

Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, destroyed by 
Hindu activists. 

Communal violence in wake of Babri Masjid destruc- 
tion wracks Indian cities, especially Bombay, 
which suffered from a series of bomb blasts in 
March. 

Unpopular Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Pre- 
vention) Act of 1985 allowed to lapse 

General elections for Lok Sabha oust Congress (I) 
government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. 

Minority Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government 
led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigns 
after thirteen days. 

Haradanahalli (H.D.) Deve Gowda, head of thirteen- 
party United Front, sworn in as India's eleventh 
prime minster. 



Country Profile 




Country 

Formal Name: Republic of India (The official, Sanskrit name 
for India is Bharat, the name of the legendary king in the 
Mahabhrata) . 

Short Form: India. 

Term for Citizens: Indian (s). 

Capital: New Delhi (National Capital Territory of Delhi). 
Date of Independence: Proclaimed August 15, 1947, from 



xxv 



Britain. 

National Holiday: Independence Day, August 15. 

Geography 

Size: Total land area 2,973,190 square kilometers. Total area, 
including territorial seas, claimed is 3,287,590 square 
kilometers. 

Topography: Three main geological regions: Indo-Gangetic 
Plain and Himalayas, collectively known as North India; and 
Peninsula or South India. Ten physiological regions: Indo- 
Gangetic Plain, northern mountains of the Himalayas, Central 
Highlands, Deccan or Peninsular Plateau, East Coast 
(Coromandel Coast in south), West Coast (Konkan, Kankara, 
and Malabar coasts), Great Indian Desert (known as Thar 
Desert in Pakistan) and Rann of Kutch, valley of the 
Brahmaputra River in Assam, northeastern hill ranges 
surrounding Assam Valley, and islands of Arabian Sea and Bay 
of Bengal. 

Climate: Climate varies significantly from Himalayas in north 
to tropical south. Four seasons: relatively dry, cool winter 
December to February; dry, hot summer March to May; 
southwest monsoon June to September when predominating 
southwest maritime winds bring rains to most of country; and 
northeast, or retreating, monsoon October and November. 

Society 

Population: 936,545,814 estimated in July 1995, with 1.8 
percent annual growth rate. About 74 percent in rural areas in 
1991; high population density — 284 persons per square 
kilometer national average, major states more than 700 
persons per square kilometer; 100 persons or fewer per square 
kilometer in some border states and insular territories. Bombay 
(officially renamed Mumbai in 1995) largest city, with 12.6 
million in 1991; twenty-three other cities with populations of 
more than 1 million. 

Health: In 1995 life expectancy for men 58.5 years, for women 
59.6 years; infant mortality rate 76.3 per 1,000 live births. 
Malaria, fiTariasis, leprosy, cholera, pneumonic plague, 
tuberculosis, trachoma, goiter, and diarrheal diseases all occur. 



xxvi 



In 1991 primary health centers, subcenters, and community 
health centers at local levels included more than 10,000 
hospitals, 24,000 dispensaries, and 811,000 beds. 

Education: Twelve-year education system; mandatory primary 
and middle levels, optional secondary education; high drop- 
out rate even at compulsory levels. System supervised by 
Department of Education, part of Ministry of Human Resource 
Development. National adult literacy rate 52.2 percent in 1991 
(male 63.9 percent, female 39.4 percent). More than 180 
universities, some 500 teacher training colleges, and several 
thousand other colleges. 

Religion: Most (82 percent) observe Hinduism; 12.1 percent 
Muslim, 2.3 percent Christian, 1.9 percent Sikh, 0.8 percent 
Buddhist, 0.4 percent Jains, 0.4 percent other, 0.1 percent not 
identified. 

Language: Official language Hindi; English also has official 
status. For use in certain official capacities, constitution 
recognizes eighteen Scheduled Languages (see Glossary): 
Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, 
Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, 
Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. Four major 
language families include officially 112 "mother tongues," each 
with 10,000 or more speakers; thirty-three languages spoken by 
1 million or more persons. Total number of languages and 
dialects varies depending on source and how counted; between 
179 and 188 languages and between forty-nine and 544 dialects 
have been tabulated; census respondents in 1961 provided 
names for 1,652 different "mother tongues." 

Ethnic Groups: Indo-Aryan 72 percent, Dravidian 25 percent, 
Mongoloid and other 3 percent. Caste system, although no 
longer sanctioned by government, prevails. Some 16 percent 
listed as members of Scheduled Castes (see Glossary), 8 
percent as members of Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary). 

Economy 

Salient Features: Economy transformed from primarily 
agriculture, forestry, fishing, and textile manufacturing in 1947 
to major heavy industry, transportation, and telecom- 
munications industries by late 1970s. Central government 
planning 1950 through late 1970s giving way to economic 
reforms and more private-sector initiatives in 1980s and 1990s. 



xxvii 



Agriculture predominates and benefits from infusion of 
modern technology by government. World Bank Group and 
developed nations provide most aid; Japan largest donor. 
Major trade partners United States, Japan, European Union, 
and nations belonging to Organization of the Petroleum 
Exporting Countries (OPEC — see Glossary). 

Currency and Exchange Rate: Rupee; US$1 = Rs35.67 (July 
1996). 

Fiscal Year (FY): April 1-March 31. 

Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Rs36.7 trillion (nearly US$1.2 
trillion) in 1994 (estimated). GDP annual average growth rate 
3.8 percent in 1994. 

Foreign Trade: Principal export trade with European Union, 
United States, and Japan. Main commodities agricultural and 
allied products, gems and jewelry, and ready-made garments. 
Iron ore, minerals, and leather and leather products also 
important. Exports 7.7 percent of GDP in FY 1992. Principal 
import trade with European Union, United States, and Japan. 
Major imports (28 percent of total) oil products from Middle 
East. Other major imports chemicals, dyes, plastics, 
pharmaceuticals, uncut precious stones, iron and steel, 
fertilizers, nonferrous metals, and pulp paper and paper 
products. Imports 9.3 percent of GDP in FY 1992. 

Balance of Payments: Negative trade balance in late 1980s and 
early 1990s. In 1993 estimated exports US$22.7 billion versus 
US$23.9 billion imports. 

Foreign Aid: Most aid provided by Aid-to-India Consortium, 
consisting of World Bank Group and Austria, Belgium, Britain, 
Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, 
Norway, Sweden, and United States. Japan largest aid granter 
and lender; US$337 million grants between 1984 and 1993, 
US$2.4 billion loans in same period. Indian aid program to 
Bhutan and Nepal; smaller programs assist Bangladesh and 
Vietnam. 

Industry: Increasing share (27.4 percent in FY 1991) of GDP, 
but employed only about 9 percent of the work force in 1991. 
Basic industries: textiles, steel and aluminum, fertilizers and 
petrochemicals, and electronics and motor vehicles. 

Energy: India importer of petroleum and natural gas but has 
abundant coal, hydroelectric power (especially in parts of 



xxviii 



North India), and burgeoning nuclear power industry. 

Minerals: Less than 2 percent share of GDP in FY 1990 and 1 
percent of labor force involved in mining and quarrying in 
1991. Basic minerals: iron, bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, mica, 
uranium ore, rare earths. 

Services: Some 39.8 percent of GDP in FY 1991, then 
employing about 13 percent of work force. Large and diverse 
transportation system. 

Agriculture: Declining share (32.8 percent) of GDP but 
employed majority of workers (67 percent of total labor force) 
in FY 1991. Around 45 percent (136 million hectares) of total 
land cultivated, 27 percent double cropped, effectively giving 
India 173 million hectares of cultivated land. Another 5 
percent (15 million hectares) permanent pastureland or 
planted in tree crops or groves. Farming by smallholders; large 
landholders divested in 1970s. Rice, wheat, pulses, and oilseeds 
dominate production, but millet, corn (maize), and sorghum 
important; commercial crops — sugar (India world's largest 
producer), cotton, jute also important. Green Revolution 
technological advances and improved high-yielding variety 
seeds, and increased fertilizer production and irrigation 
between mid-1960s and early 1980s. Dairy farming, fishing, and 
forestry important parts of agricultural sector. Agricultural 
products around 18 percent of total exports. 

Science and Technology: Major government investment (80 
percent of total) in and control of science and technology 
sector; 200 national laboratories, 200 government-sector 
research and development institutions, and about 1,000 
research and development units in industrial sector supported 
by both public and private funds. Substantial investments in 
research and development in defense, nuclear science, space, 
and agriculture. 

Transportation and Telecommunications 

Railroads: Track route length 62,458 in mid-1990s, fourth most 
heavily used system in world, both for passengers and freight; 
all government-owned and operated by Indian Railways. Some 
14,600 kilometers double or multiple tracked; 11,000 
kilometers electrified, 116,000 bridges; some high-speed 
routes; domestic production of most rolling stock and other 
components. Major government investment in modernization 



xxix 



in 1990s. Full metro system in Calcutta, rapid transit system in 
Madras, and major system planned for New Delhi: Bombav 
served bv suburban rail network. 

Roads: Almost 2 million kilometers: 960.000 kilometers 
surfaced roads, and more than 1 million kilometers 
constructed of gravel, crushed stone, or earth. Fifty-three 
highways, almost 20.000 kilometers in total length., rated as 
national highways: carry about 40 percent of road traffic. 
Around 60 percent of all passenger traffic travels bv road. 
Urban transit dominated bv motor vehicles: increasing use of 
two- and three-wheel vehicles., automobiles, minibuses., buses, 
trucks. Large cities have major urban bus systems. Bullocks, 
camels, elephants, and other beasts of burden seen throughout 
India. 

Maritime Transport: Eleven major ports and 139 minor ports. 
In 1995 three government-owned and between fifty and sixty 
privately owned shipping companies. Four major and three 
medium-sized shipyards, all government run. thirtv-five smaller 
shipyards in private sector. Major coastal and ocean trade 
routes., more than 16.000 kilometers of inland waterways, more 
than 3.600 kilometers navigable bv lar^e vessels, although onlv 
about 2.000 kilometers used. 

Airports: Two airlines (.Air India and Indian .Airlines) and one 
helicopter service (Pawan Hans) owned bv government and six 
privately owned airlines: latter account for onlv 10 percent of 
domestic air traffic. Of 288 airports, 208 permanent-surface 
runways and two runways of more than 3.659 meters. Major 
international airports at Bombav (Mumbai). Delhi, Calcutta. 
Madras, and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum). 
International service also from Mamargao (Goa). Bangalore, 
and Hyderabad. Major regional airports at Ahmadabad. 
Allahabad. Pune. Srinas;ar. Chandigarh. Kochi (Cochin). 
Xagpur, and Thiruvananthapuram. 

Telecommunications: National system controlled bv 
government, with public corporations running service in New 
Delhi and Bombav: some basic telephone services opened to 
private-sector competition in 1994: telephone line density onlv 
0.7 per 100 persons in 1994, among lowest of major nations of 
.Asia. Submarine cables link India to Malaysia and United .Arab 
Emirates. Paging, cellular phone service, and electronic mail 
being introduced. Government-owned radio (Akashvani) and 
television I Doordarshan | networks with extensive national and 



xxx 



local coverage; private-sector television networks via cable and 
satellite becoming prolific. 

Government and Politics 

Government: Federal republic based on separation of powers 
into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Central 
government known as union government. Constitution of 1950 
in force but much amended; power concentrated in 
Parliament with upper house — Rajya Sabha (Council of 
States) — appointed by president and elected by state and 
territory assemblies and lower house — Lok Sabha (House of 
the People) — popularly elected. Supreme Court highest court 
of land; high courts in states. 

Administrative Divisions: Twenty-five states with 476 districts, 
one national capital territory, six union territories. State 
governors appointed by president, chief minister member of 
popularly elected state assembly; central-government agencies 
prevalent at local levels. Constitution allows central control of 
state government (President's Rule) during time of emergency 
on recommendation of governor. Districts subdivided into 
taluqs or tehsils, townships that contain from 200 to 600 villages. 
Small, centrally controlled union territories with lieutenant 
governor or chief commissioner appointed by president. 

Politics: With 354 million voters, some 14,700 candidates, more 
than 500 parties, and nearly 595,000 polling stations in April- 
May 1996 elections, India often called "world's largest democ- 
racy." Since independence, dominated by Indian National 
Congress (Congress — see Glossary) and its factions; occasional 
rule by minority-party and coalition governments; Janata Party, 
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), communist parties, and several 
regional parties also important. 

Foreign Relations: Member of United Nations (UN), South 
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), 
Nonaligned Movement, and numerous other international 
organizations. Relations with all major nations based on 
principles of nonalignment. 

National Security 

Armed Forces: Armed forces of India total active-duty 
personnel in 1994 approximately 1,104,000. Component 



xxxi 



services: army, 940,000; navy, 54,000, of which 5,000 naval 
aviation and 1,000 marines; air force, 110,000. Reserve forces 
personnel total 1,964,554; also twelve paramilitary forces under 
control of various ministries with total strength of 762,735 in 
1994. 

Military Units: Army structured as twelve corps (twenty-two 
infantry divisions) under central control, organized into five 
tactical area commands. Navy units in three area commands. 
Air Force units in five operational commands. Police 
commands coincide with state boundaries. 

Military Equipment: Army main battle tanks, armored 
personnel carriers (APCs), towed and self-propelled artillery, 
helicopters. Navy: aircraft carriers, submarines, destroyers, 
frigates, fast-attack patrol craft, amphibious ships, fixed-wing 
aircraft, helicopters, and marine reconnaissance aircraft. Air 
Force: ground-attack fighters, transports, trainers, and 
helicopters. Emphasis on domestic production of most items; 
most imports from Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. 
Older equipment from Soviet Union. 

Military Budget: Approximately US$6.9 billion, or less than 5 
percent of gross national product in FY 1994. 

Foreign Military Relations: Long-term ties with Soviet Union 
and, later, Russia. Occasional joint operations with Indian 
Ocean nations and United States. Peacekeeping forces sent to 
Sri Lanka and Maldives. Since 1950 Indian military and police 
contingents also have participated in UN peacekeeping forces 
in Korea, Suez Canal, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, Congo, Lebanon, 
Yemen, West Irian, Iran-Iraq border, Costa Rica, El Salvador, 
Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Namibia, Angola, former 
Yugoslavia, Mozambique, Cambodia, and Somalia. 

Internal Security Forces: Paramilitary forces guard coasts, 
borders, and sensitive military areas; paramilitary sent by 
central government to aid local police forces and against 
insurgencies. Provincial Armed Constabulary and Central 
Reserve Police Force handle police duties. 



xxxii 



Introduction 



INDIA IS A LAND of ancient civilization, with cities and vil- 
lages, cultivated fields, and great works of art dating back 4,000 
years. India's high population density and variety of social, eco- 
nomic, and cultural configurations are the products of a long 
process of regional expansion. In the last decade of the twenti- 
eth century, such expansion has led to the rapid erosion of 
India's forest and wilderness areas in the face of ever-increasing 
demands for resources and gigantic population pressures — 
India's population is projected to exceed 1 billion by the 
twenty-first century! 

Such problems are a relatively recent phenomenon. Rhinoc- 
eros inhabited the North Indian plains as late as the sixteenth 
century. Historical records and literature of earlier periods 
reveal the motif of the forest everywhere. Stories of merchant 
caravans typically included travel through long stretches of jun- 
gle inhabited by wild beasts and strange people; royal adven- 
tures usually included a hunting expedition and meetings with 
unusual beings. In the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, early 
epics that reflect life in India before 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C., 
respectively, the forest begins at the edge of the city, and the 
heroes regularly spend periods of exile wandering far from civ- 
ilization before returning to rid the world of evil. The formu- 
laic rituals of the Vedas also reflect attempts to create a 
regulated, geometric space from the raw products of nature. 

The country's past serves as a reminder that India today, with 
its overcrowding and scramble for material gain, its poverty 
and outstanding intellectual accomplishments, is a society in 
constant change. Human beings, mostly humble folk, have 
within a period of 200 generations turned the wilderness into 
one of the most complicated societies in the world. The process 
began in the northwest in the third millennium B.C., with the 
Indus Valley, or Harappan, civilization, when an agricultural 
economy gave rise to extensive urbanization and long-distance 
trade. The second stage occurred during the first millennium 
B.C., when the Ganga-Yamuna river basin and several southern 
river deltas experienced extensive agricultural expansion and 
population growth, leading to the rebirth of cities, trade, and a 
sophisticated urban culture. 



xxxv 




liinnt I Administrative Divisions of India, 1995 



XXXIV 



By the seventh century A.D., a dozen core regions based on 
access to irrigation-supported kingdoms became tied to a 
pan-Indian cultural tradition and participated in increasing 
cross-cultural ties with other parts of Asia and the Middle East. 
India's inclusion within a global trading economy after the thir- 
teenth century culminated in the arrival of Portuguese explor- 
ers, traders, and missionaries, beginning in 1498. Although 
there were ebbs and flows in the pattern, the overall tendency 
was for peasant cultivators and their overlords to expand agri- 
culture and animal husbandry into new ecological zones, and 
to push hunting and gathering societies farther into the hills. 

By the twentieth century, most such tribal (see Glossary) 
groups, although constituting a substantial minority within 
India, lived in restricted areas under severe pressure from the 
caste-based agricultural and trading societies pressing from the 
plains. Because this evolution took place over more than forty 
centuries and encompassed a wide range of ecological niches 
and peoples, the resulting social pattern is extremely compli- 
cated and alters constantly. 

India had its share of conquerors who moved in from the 
northwest and overran the north or central parts of the coun- 
try. These migrations began with the Aryan peoples of the sec- 
ond millennium B.C. and culminated in the unification of the 
entire country for the first time in the seventeenth century 
under the Mughals. Mostly these conquerors were nomadic or 
seminomadic people who adopted or expanded the agricul- 
tural economy and contributed new cultural forms or religions, 
such as Islam. 

The Europeans, primarily the English, arrived in force in the 
early seventeenth century and by the eighteenth century had 
made a profound impact on India. India was forced, for the 
first time, into a subordinate role within a world system based 
on industrial production rather than agriculture. Many of the 
dynamic craft or cottage industries that had long attracted for- 
eigners to India suffered extensively under competition with 
new modes of mass production fostered by the British. Modern 
institutions, such as universities, and technologies, such as rail- 
roads and mass communication, broke with Indian intellectual 
traditions and served British, rather than Indian, economic 
interests. A country that in the eighteenth century was a mag- 
net for trade was, by the twentieth century, an underdeveloped 
and overpopulated land groaning under alien domination. 
Even at the end of the twentieth century, with the period of 



xxx vi 



colonialism well in the past, Indians remain sensitive to foreign 
domination and are determined to prevent the country from 
coming under such domination again. 

Through India's long history, religion has been the carrier 
and preserver of culture. One distinctive aspect of the evolu- 
tion of civilization in India has been the importance of heredi- 
tary priesthoods, often Brahmans (see Glossary), who have 
functioned as intellectual elites. The heritage preserved by 
these groups had its origin in the Vedas and allied bodies of lit- 
erature in the Sanskrit language, which evolved in North India 
during the second millennium B.C. This tradition always 
accepted a wide range of paths to ultimate truth, and thus 
encompassed numerous rituals and forms of divinity within a 
polytheistic system. Generally, Brahmans supported the phe- 
nomenon known as Sanskritization, or the inclusion of local or 
regional traditions within Sanskrit literary models and 
pan-Indian cultural motifs. In this way, there has been a steady 
spread of North Indian cultural and linguistic forms through- 
out the country. This process has not gone unopposed. Sid- 
dhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and Mahavira (founder of 
Jainism) in the fifth century B.C. represented alternative meth- 
ods for truth-seekers; they renounced the importance of priest- 
hoods in favor of monastic orders without reference to birth. 
The largest challenge came from Islam, which rests on Arabic 
rather than Sanskritic cultural traditions, and has served, espe- 
cially since the eleventh century, as an important alternative 
religious path. The interaction of Brahmanical religious forms 
with local variations and with separate religions creates another 
level of complexity in Indian social life. 

Closely allied with religious belief, and deeply rooted in his- 
tory, caste remains an important feature of Indian society. 
Caste in many Indian languages is jati, or birth — a system of 
classifying and separating people from birth within thousands 
of different groups labeled by occupation, ritual status, social 
etiquette, and language. Scholars have long debated the ori- 
gins of this system, and have suggested as the origin religious 
concepts of reincarnation, the incorporation of many ethnic 
groups within agricultural systems over the millennia, or occu- 
pational stratification within emerging class societies. What is 
certain is that nineteenth-century British administrators, in 
their drive to classify and regulate the many social groups they 
encountered in everyday administration, established lists or 
schedules of different caste groups. At that time, it seemed that 



xxxvn 



the rules against intermarriage and interdining that defined 
caste boundaries tended to freeze these groups within 
unchanging little societies, a view that fit well with imperialistic 
models imposed on India as a whole. Experience during the 
twentieth century has demonstrated that the caste system is 
capable of radical change and adaptation. 

Modernization and urbanization have led to a decline in the 
outward display of caste exclusiveness, so that issues of caste 
may never emerge directly on public transit or in the work- 
place. Entire castes have changed their status, claiming higher 
positions as they shed their traditional occupations or accumu- 
late money and power. In many villages, however, the segrega- 
tion of castes by neighborhood and through daily behavior still 
exists at the end of the twentieth century. In the cities, segrega- 
tion takes more subtle forms, emerging directly at times of 
marriage but existing more often as an undercurrent of dis- 
crimination in educational opportunities, hiring, and promo- 
tion. The British schedules of different castes, especially those 
of very low or Untouchable (Dalit — see Glossary) groups, later 
became the basis for affirmative-action programs in indepen- 
dent India that allowed some members of the most oppressed 
caste groups access to good education and high-paying jobs. 
The reservation of positions for Backward Classes (see Glos- 
sary) has remained a sore point with higher-ranked groups and 
has contributed to numerous political confrontations. Mean- 
while, attempts by low-ranking (and desperately poor) castes to 
organize and agitate against discrimination have been met with 
violence in most Indian states and territories. Caste, therefore, 
is a very live issue. 

Religious, caste, and regional diversity exist in India against a 
background of poverty. At independence in 1947, the British 
left India in terrible condition. The country emerged from 
World War II with a rudimentary scientific and industrial base 
and a rapidly expanding population that lived primarily in vil- 
lages and was divided by gross inequalities in status and wealth. 
Under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime 
minister (1947-64), India addressed its economic crisis 
through a combination of socialist planning and free enter- 
prise. During the 1950s and 1960s, large government invest- 
ments made India as a whole into one of the most 
industrialized nations in the world. Considerable expenditure 
on irrigation facilities and fertilizer plants, combined with the 
introduction of high-yield variety seeds in the 1960s, allowed 



xxxviii 



the Green Revolution to banish famine. The abolition of 
princely states and large land holdings, combined with (mostly 
ineffective) land redistribution schemes, also eliminated some 
of the most glaring inequalities in the countryside and in some 
areas, such as Punjab, stimulated the growth of middle-sized 
entrepreneurial farms. Building on the education system 
bequeathed by the British, India established an infrastructure 
of universities, basic research institutes, and applied research 
facilities that trained one of the world's largest scientific and 
technical establishments. 

The socialist model of development remained dominant in 
India through the 1970s, under the leadership of Prime Minis- 
ter Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter. Government-owned firms 
controlled iron and steel, mining, electronics, cement, chemi- 
cals, and other major industries. Telecommunications media, 
railroads, and eventually the banking industry were national- 
ized. Import-substitution policies, designed to encourage 
Indian firms and push out multinational corporations, 
included strict and time-consuming procedures for obtaining 
licenses and laws that prohibited firms from operating in India 
without majority ownership by Indian citizens or corporations. 
These rules were instrumental, for example, in driving IBM 
from India in the 1970s, leading to the growth of an indige- 
nous Indian computer industry. By the late 1980s, however, 
after Mrs. Gandhi's 1984 assassination, the disadvantages of the 
centrally planned economy began to outweigh its benefits. 
Inefficiency in public-sector firms, lack of entrepreneurial 
innovation, excessive bureaucracy, and the inability of the 
Indian scientific and technical apparatus to transfer technology 
to marketable goods kept many Indian firms from being com- 
petitive in international markets. 

Under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his successors, the 
national and state-level (states, union territories, and the 
national capital territory) governments liberalized licensing 
requirements and eventually rescinded rules on foreign owner- 
ship, while taking steps to scale down government market 
share in a number of high-technology markets. Multinational 
firms began to reenter India in the late 1980s and the early 
1990s, as the government encouraged private enterprise and 
international sales in its search for foreign exchange. India 
began to open its economy to the world. 

Indian-style socialism was probably necessary in the years 
after independence to protect the nation from foreign eco- 



xxx IX 



nomic domination, but its biggest problem was that it did not 
eliminate poverty. The vast majority of India's population con- 
tinued to live in small agricultural villages with few public 
amenities. A significant minority of the population in the 1990s 
live below the Indian definition of the poverty line, surviving at 
subsistence level, unemployed or underemployed, with little 
education or opportunity for training, and suffering from a 
variety of curable health problems. There are also some 200 
million people who live above the official poverty line, but 
whose lives remain precariously balanced on the border of des- 
titution. The per capita income of India as a whole remains 
among the lowest in the world. One of the biggest issues facing 
India as its economy has changed direction is that free-market 
capitalism offers little help for this large mass of people, who 
lack the skills or opportunity to participate in the new econ- 
omy. 

The big social story of India in the 1980s and the 1990s is the 
emergence of the middle class. This group includes members 
of prosperous farming families, as well as the primarily 
urban-based professional, administrative, and business elites 
who benefited from forty years of government protection and 
training. By the mid-1990s, the drive toward modernization 
had transformed 26.1 percent of the country into urban areas, 
where, amid masses of impoverished citizens, a sizable class of 
consumers has arisen. The members of this increasingly vocal 
middle class chafe under the older, regulated economy and 
demand a loosening of economic controls to make consumer 
goods available on the free market. They want education for 
their children that prepares them for technical and profes- 
sional careers, increasingly in the private sector instead of the 
traditional sinecures in government offices. They build their 
well-appointed brick houses in exclusive suburban neighbor- 
hoods or surround their lots with high walls amid urban squa- 
lor, driving their scooters or automobiles to work while their 
children attend private schools. 

The result of these processes over the course of fifty years is a 
dynamic, modernizing India with major class cleavages. The 
upper 1 or 2 percent of the population includes some of the 
wealthiest people in the world, who can be seen at the race- 
track in the latest fashions from Paris or Tokyo, who travel 
extensively outside India for business, pleasure, or advanced 
medical care, and whose children attend the most exclusive 
English-language schools within India and abroad. For the 



x! 



middle class, which makes up between 15 and 25 percent of the 
population, the end of the twentieth century is a time of rela- 
tive prosperity: incomes generally keep pace with inflation and 
jobs may still be obtained through family connections. The 
increase in consumer goods, such as washing machines and 
electric kitchen appliances, makes life easier and reduces 
dependence on lower-class (and low-caste) servants. For the 
industrial working class, the 1990s are a period of transition as 
dynamic new industries grow, mostly in the private sector, while 
many large government-sponsored plants are in jeopardy. The 
trade union movement, closely connected in some states with 
communist parties, finds itself under considerable pressure 
during a period of structural change in the economy. For large 
numbers of peasants and dwellers in urban slums, a way out of 
poverty remains as elusive as it had seemed for their grandpar- 
ents at independence. 

The political system responsible for these gigantic successes 
and failures has been democratic; India has called itself "the 
world's largest democracy." Paradoxically, it was the autocratic 
rule of the British that gave birth to the rule of the people. 
Democratization started when a group of concerned British cit- 
izens in India and well-to-do Indian professionals gathered in 
Bombay in 1885 to form a political debating society, the Indian 
National Congress (Congress — see Glossary). Originally con- 
ceived as a lobbying group, the Congress after 1900 became 
radicalized and took the forefront in a drive for home rule that 
encompassed elected assemblies and parliamentary procedure. 
In the face of British intransigence, the Congress soon became 
the leading organization within a broad-based freedom strug- 
gle that finally forced the British out in 1947. Mohandas 
Karamchand Gandhi (the Mahatma or Great Soul) was a cen- 
tral figure in this struggle because he was able to turn the Con- 
gress from an elite pressure group into a mass movement that 
mobilized hundreds of millions of people against the immoral- 
ity of a foreign, nondemocratic system. 

Gandhi perfected nonviolent techniques for general strikes 
and civil disobedience, and coordinated demonstrations with 
mass publicity; the techniques that he popularized have played 
a part in later Indian and world politics (including the United 
States civil rights movement). He evolved a philosophy of polit- 
ical involvement as sacrifice for the good of the world and 
played the role of a holy man who was also a cagey politician — 



xli 



an image that remained important for Indian political figures 
after independence. 

In a move to undercut British industrial superiority, Gandhi 
encouraged a return to a communal, rustic life and village 
handicrafts as the most humane way of life. Finally, he railed 
against the segregation of the caste system and religious big- 
otry that reduced large minorities within India to second-class 
citizenship. Gandhi was thus able to unite European humanis- 
tic and democratic ideas with Indian concepts of an interde- 
pendent, responsible community to create a unique political 
philosophy complete with action plan. In the last years before 
his assassination in 1948, Gandhi's idiosyncratic program fell 
out of step with the modernization paradigm of Nehru and the 
leadership of an independent India, and his ideas became a 
background theme within Indian political economy. On a regu- 
lar basis, however, Indian leaders continue to hearken back to 
his message and employ his organizational and media tactics 
on the independent Indian political scene. 

The Congress remained the most important political organi- 
zation in India after independence. Except for brief periods in 
the late 1970s and late 1980s and until the mid-1990s, the Con- 
gress always controlled Parliament and chose the prime minis- 
ter. The political dynasty of Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), his 
daughter Indira Gandhi (1965-77, 1980-84), and her son Rajiv 
Gandhi (1984-89) was crucial in keeping the Congress in 
power and also providing continuity in leadership for the coun- 
try. The party was able to appeal to a wide segment of the poor 
(including low castes and Muslims) through its ideology of 
social equality and welfare programs, while appealing to the 
more prosperous voters — usually from upper castes — by pre- 
serving private property and supporting village community 
leadership. Because it stayed in power so long, the Congress 
was able to dispense government benefits to a wide range of 
constituencies, which prompted charges of corruption and led 
to Congress reversals in the late 1980s. Because it affected a 
type of socialist policy, the Congress diffused or incorporated 
left-wing political rhetoric and prevented the growth of a 
communist-led insurrection that might have been expected 
under the difficult social conditions existing in India. 

Although a vibrant communist movement remains a force in 
Indian politics, it manifests itself at the state level of govern- 
ment rather than in national political power or large-scale revo- 
lutionary turmoil. Challenges from the right were small as well 



xlii 



until the early 1990s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — 
Indian People's Party) emerged as a serious contender for 
national leadership. The BJP advocated a blend of Hindu 
nationalism that inserted religious issues into the heart of 
national political debates, unlike the secular ideology that offi- 
cially dominated Indian political thought after independence. 
In the early 1990s, however, the Congress, after having entered 
its second century of dominance over the Indian political land- 
scape, continued to hold on to power with a middle-of-the-road 
message and smaller majorities. 

The federal structure of India, embodied in the constitution 
of 1951, attempts to strike a balance between a strong central 
government and the autonomous governments of the 
nation-sized states, each with a distinct culture and deep histor- 
ical roots, that make up the union. A formidable array of pow- 
ers at the center makes it possible for the central government 
to intervene in state issues; these powers include control over 
the military, the presence of an appointed governor to monitor 
affairs within each state, and the ability of the president to sus- 
pend state-level legislatures in times of internal disorder and 
declare direct President's Rule. In theory, these powers should 
come into play rarely because the regular administration of the 
states resides with elected assemblies and chief ministers 
appointed through parliamentary procedures. State govern- 
ments have extensive powers over almost all of their internal 
affairs. The framers of the national constitution constructed a 
series of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, 
and judicial branches at the center, and between the center 
and the states, designed to provide national security while 
allowing a maximum of state autonomy within the diversified 
union. 

The Indian political system has proven to be flexible and 
durable, but major internal conflicts have threatened the con- 
stitution. In practice, the elected office of the nation's presi- 
dent has gravitated toward the formal and ritual aspects of 
executive power, while the office of the prime minister, backed 
up by a majority in Parliament, the cabinet, national security 
forces, and the bureaucracy of the Indian Administrative Ser- 
vice, has wielded the actual power. The national Parliament has 
not developed an independent committee structure and criti- 
cal tradition that could stand against the force of the executive 
branch. The judiciary, while remaining independent and at 
times crucial in determining national policy, has stayed in the 



xliii 



background and is subject to future change through constitu- 
tional amendments. The constitution itself has been subject to 
numerous amendments since its adoption in 1950. By August 
1996, the constitution had been amended eighty times. 

National politics have become contests to set up the appoint- 
ment of the prime minister, who then has considerable power 
to interfere directly or through a cooperative president in all 
aspects of national life. The most drastic example of this power 
occurred in 1975, when Indira Gandhi implemented the con- 
stitutional provision for a declaration of Emergency, suspend- 
ing civil rights for eighteen months, using Parliament as a tool 
for eliminating opposition, and ruling with the aid of a small 
circle of advisers. The more common form of executive inter- 
ference has been the suspension of state legislatures under a 
variety of pretexts and the implementation of President's Rule. 
This typically has occurred when opposition parties have cap- 
tured state legislatures and set in motion policies unfavorable 
to the prime minister's party. After Indira Gandhi's assassina- 
tion in 1984, her successors engaged in such overt acts of inter- 
ference less often. 

The main opposition to the national executive comes from 
the states, in a variety of legal and extralegal struggles for 
regional autonomy. Most of the states have developed specific 
political identities based on forms of ethnicity that claim a long 
historical past. The most common identifying characteristic is 
language. Agitation in what became the state of Andhra 
Pradesh led the way in the 1950s, resulting in the reorganiza- 
tion of state boundaries along linguistic lines. Agitations in the 
state of Tamil Nadu in the 1960s resulted in domination of the 
state by parties dedicated officially to Tamil nationalism. 

In the northeast, regional struggles have coalesced around 
tribal identities, leading to the formation of a number of small 
states based on dominant tribal groupings. Farther south, in 
Kerala and West Bengal, communist parties have upheld the 
banner of regionalism by capturing state assemblies and imple- 
menting radical socialist programs against the wishes of the 
central government. 

The regional movements most threatening to national inte- 
gration have occurred in the northwest. The state of Punjab 
was divided by the Indian government twice after indepen- 
dence — Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were sliced off — 
before it achieved a Sikh majority population in what remained 
of Punjab. That majority allowed the Sikh-led Akali Dal (Eter- 



xliv 



nal Party) to capture the state assembly in the early 1980s. By 
then radical separatist elements were determined to fight for 
an independent Sikh Punjab. The result was an army attack on 
Sikh militants occupying the Golden Temple in Amritsar, 
Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards, both in 
1984, and a ten-year internal security struggle that has killed 
thousands. In India's state of Jammu and Kashmir (often 
referred to as Kashmir), where Muslims constitute the majority 
of the population, regional struggle takes a different religious 
form and has created intense security problems that keep bilat- 
eral relations with Pakistan, which also lays claim to Kashmir, in 
a tense mode. 

The central government usually has been able to defuse 
regional agitations by agreeing to redefinition of state bound- 
aries or by guaranteeing differing degrees of regional auton- 
omy, including acquiescence in the control of the state 
government by regional political parties. This strategy defused 
the original linguistic agitations through the 1970s, and led to 
the resolution of the destructive political and ethnic crises in 
Assam in the mid-1980s. When national security interests came 
into play, however, as in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, the 
central government did not hesitate to use force. 

In the mid-1990s, India remains a strong unified nation, with 
a long history of constitutional government and democracy, 
but at any moment there are half a dozen regional political agi- 
tations underway and a dozen guerrilla movements in different 
parts of the country advocating various types of official recogni- 
tion or outright independence based on ethnic affiliation. The 
unity of the country as a whole has never been seriously threat- 
ened by these movements. Because the benefits of union 
within India have outweighed the advantages of independence 
for most people within each state, there have always been mod- 
erate elements within the states willing to make deals with the 
central government, and security forces have proven capable of 
repressing any armed struggle at the regional level. In addi- 
tion, state-level opposition, whether in the legislatures or in the 
streets, has been an effective means of preventing massive 
interference from New Delhi in the day-to-day lives of citizens, 
and thus has provided a crucial check that has preserved the 
democratic system and the constitution. 

One of the most serious challenges to India's internal secu- 
rity and democratic traditions has come from so-called commu- 
nal disorders, or riots, based on ethnic cleavages. The most 



xlv 



typical form is a religious riot, mostly between Hindus and 
Muslims, although some of these disturbances also occur 
between different castes or linguistic groups. Most of these 
struggles start with neighborhood squabbles of little signifi- 
cance, but rapidly escalate into mob looting and burning, 
street fighting, and violent intervention by the police or para- 
military forces. 

Religious ideology has played only a small part in these 
events. Instead, the pressures of urban life in overcrowded, 
poorer neighborhoods, combined with competition for limited 
economic opportunities, create an environment in which eth- 
nic differences become convenient labels for defining enemies, 
and criminal behavior becomes commonplace. Whether 
ignited by a street accident or a major political event, passions 
in these areas may be directed into mob action. However, after 
the catastrophe of independence (when hundreds of thou- 
sands in North India died during the partition of India and 
Pakistan and at least 12 million became refugees), and because 
the pattern of rioting has continued annually in various cities, a 
culture of distrust has grown up among a sizable minority of 
Hindus and Muslims. This distrust has manifested itself in the 
nationwide agitations fomented by elements of the BJP and 
communal Hindu parties in the early 1990s. It reached a peak 
in December 1992 with the dramatic destruction of the Babri 
Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya (in Uttar Pradesh), and commu- 
nal riots and bombings in major cities throughout India in 
early 1993. In this manner, the frictions of daily life in an over- 
crowded, poor nation have had a major impact on the national 
political agenda. 

The internal conflict between Hindus and Muslims has 
received some of its stimulus since 1947 from the international 
conflict between India and Pakistan. One of the great tragedies 
of the freedom struggle was the relentless polarization of opin- 
ion between the Congress, which came to represent mostly 
Hindus, and the All-India Muslim League (Muslim League — 
see Glossary), which eventually stood behind a demand for a 
separate homeland for a Muslim majority. This division, 
encouraged under British rule by provisions for separate elec- 
torates for Muslims, led to the partition of Pakistan from India 
and the outbreak of hostilities over Kashmir. Warfare between 
India and Pakistan occurred in 1947, 1965, and 1971; the last 
conflict led to the independence of Bangladesh (formerly East 
Pakistan) and a major strategic victory by India. 



xlvi 



The perception of Pakistan as an enemy nation has over- 
shadowed all other Indian foreign policy considerations 
because neither country has relinquished claims over Kashmir, 
and a series of border irritations continue to bedevil attempts 
at rapprochement. In the late 1980s, tensions over large-scale 
military maneuvers almost led to war, and regular fighting over 
glacial wastelands in Kashmir continues to keep the pressure 
high. An added dimension emerged in 1987 when Pakistan 
publicly admitted that it possessed nuclear weapons capability, 
matching Indian nuclear capabilities demonstrated in 1974. In 
the mid-1990s, both nations continue to devote a large percent- 
age of their military budgets to developing or to purchasing 
advanced weaponry, which is mostly aimed at each other — a 
serious drain of resources needed for economic growth. 

Nehru and the early leadership of independent India had 
envisioned a nation at peace with the rest of the world, in keep- 
ing with Gandhian ideals and socialist goals. Under Nehru's 
guidance, India distanced itself from Cold War politics and 
played a major part in the Nonaligned Movement (see Glos- 
sary). Until the early 1960s, India spent relatively little on 
national defense and enjoyed an excellent relationship with 
the United States, a relationship that peaked in John F. 
Kennedy's presidency. India's strategic position changed after 
China defeated the Indian army in the border war of 1962 and 
war with Pakistan occurred in 1965. During this period, the sit- 
uation became more precarious because India had opponents 
on two fronts. In addition, Pakistan began to receive substantial 
amounts of military assistance from the United States, ostensi- 
bly to support anticommunism, but it was no secret that most 
of the weapons purchased with United States aid were a deter- 
rent projected against India. Under these circumstances, India 
began to move closer to the Soviet Union, purchasing outright 
large amounts of military hardware or making agreements to 
produce it indigenously. 

Relations between the United States and India reached a low 
point in 1971 during the Bangladesh war of independence, 
when a United States naval force entered the Bay of Bengal to 
show support for Pakistan although doing nothing to forestall 
its defeat. This display of force, which could not be opposed by 
India or the Soviet Union, served only to strain the relationship 
between India and the United States and heightened Cold War 
tensions in South Asia. During the 1970s, as the United States 
and China improved relations and China became closer in 



xlvii 



turn to Pakistan, India's strategic position became more 
entwined with Cold War issues, and the Soviet connection 
became even more important. These international postures 
contrasted dramatically with the increasing importance to 
India of American scientific and economic links, which were 
strengthened by the increasing emigration of Indian citizens to 
North America. The overall result, however, was India's weaker 
international situation in the view of some Americans. 

During the 1980s, then, India was still officially a nonaligned 
nation but in fact found itself deeply embedded in Cold War 
strategy. India's reaction to the Soviet occupation of Afghani- 
stan was a disquieting feature of Indian foreign policy, in that 
India decried the Soviet military presence but did nothing 
against it. Continued United States support for Pakistan, plus 
the buildup of United States strike forces on the small island of 
Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, heightened tensions. It was 
no coincidence, therefore, that the 1980s witnessed a major 
expansion of Indian naval forces, with the addition of two air- 
craft carriers, a submarine fleet, and major surface ships, 
including transport craft. But although the Indian buildup 
made the United States unhappy, India's technological capaci- 
ties remained inferior to those of the United States Navy, and 
the Indian navy was never a large threat to United States inter- 
ests. Instead, the growth of the Indian navy had major implica- 
tions for the regional balance of power within South Asia. The 
Indian navy could potentially create a second front against 
Pakistan should major hostilities recur. 

India's military buildup allowed it to intervene in low-inten- 
sity conflicts throughout South Asia. From 1987 to 1990, the 
Indian Peace Keeping Force of more than 60,000 personnel 
was active in Sri Lanka and became embroiled in a fruitless war 
against Tamil separatist guerrillas. And, in 1988 Indian forces 
briefly intervened in Maldives to prevent a coup. Regular bor- 
der problems with Bangladesh after 1971, the Indian annex- 
ation of Sikkim in 1975, and the 1989 closure of the border 
with Nepal over economic disagreements all added up to the 
picture of a big country bullying its smaller neighbors, a vision 
Indian leaders took great pains to dispel. Thus, even though 
the country officially remained at peace during the 1980s, 
India's growing military power and the intersecting problems 
of regional dominance and Cold War ambivalence drove an 
ambitious foreign policy. 



xlviii 



The Indian strategic position changed dramatically in the 
early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, and then the disintegra- 
tion of the Soviet Union itself, deprived India of a great ally but 
also put a stop to many of the worldwide tensions that had 
relentlessly pulled India into global alignments. When the 
United States cut off military aid to Pakistan in 1990, it defused 
one of the most intractable barriers to good relations with 
India. Then, in 1992, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq 
brought India grudgingly into an alignment with both Pakistan 
and the United States, a connection strengthened in 1994 
when troops from all three nations cooperated in Somalia 
under the aegis of the United Nations. 

The possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan and India 
immersed them in a familiar scenario of mutually assured 
destruction and made it more problematic for India, despite its 
military superiority, to overrun Pakistan. Thus, in the mid- 
1990s, despite continuing hostility over Kashmir, which intensi- 
fied as the internal situation there disintegrated in the 1990s, 
the long-term possibilities for official peace between the two 
countries remained good. Threats from other South Asian 
nations were negligible. Issues with China were unresolved but 
not very significant. No other country in the world presented a 
strategic threat. As budgetary problems beset the government 
in the mid-1990s, therefore, the Indian military began cut- 
backs. The military also expanded contacts with a variety of 
other nations, including Russia and the United States. India 
hence has entered a period of relative security and multilateral 
contacts quite different from its twenty-five-year Cold War 
immersion. 

India is a complex geographic, historical, religious, social, 
economic, and political entity. India is one of the oldest human 
civilizations and yet displays no cultural features common to all 
its members. It is one of the richest nations in history, but most 
of its people are among the poorest in the world. Its ideology 
rests on some of the most sublime concepts of humanism and 
nonviolence, but deep-seated discrimination and violent 
responses are daily news. It has one of the world's most stable 
political structures, but that structure is constantly in crisis. 
The nation is seeking a type of great power status, but no one is 
sure what that involves. India, in the end, defies easy analysis. 

* * * 



xlix 



The most notable event that occurred in India after the 
manuscript for this book was completed in the summer of 1995 
was the nationwide general elections for the Lok Sabha, the 
lower house of Parliament, held in April and May 1996. The 
elections were held in the wake of a US$18 million bribery 
scandal and resignations involving seven cabinet members and 
numerous others. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, leader 
of the ruling Congress (I), was accused of accepting substantial 
bribes. Lai Krishna Advani, head of the BJP, the leading opposi- 
tion party, was arrested for his alleged acceptance of bribes. For 
many voters, this scandal was the culmination of scandals and 
corruption associated for years with old-guard politicians. 

The world's largest democracy went to the polls, except in 
Jammu and Kashmir, over three days between April 27 and May 
7 with nearly 14,700 candidates from 522 parties running for 
543 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats (the other two seats are filled 
with Anglo-Indians appointed by the president). Some 16,900 
others vied for 914 seats in six state and union territory assem- 
bly elections. The candidates were as diverse as ever, with a 
plethora of Backward Class candidates rising to challenge high- 
caste hopefuls. Prominent among them was Janata Dal Party 
candidate Laloo Prasad Yadev, the chief minister of Bihar, who 
ran on an anti-Brahman caste platform. Phoolan Devi, a 
former convicted outlaw, who became world-famous as India's 
"Bandit Queen," also successfully ran for office. One highly 
favored potential candidate who decided not to run was Sonia 
Gandhi, widow of Rajiv Gandhi, daughter-in-law of Indira Gan- 
dhi, and granddaughter-in-law of Jawaharlal Nehru. She 
resisted the honor amidst tensions between herself and Rao 
and, in the minds of some observers, ended the Nehru-Gandhi 
dynasty while sealing the fate of the Congress (I) . 

Some 60 percent of India's 590 million voters turned out, 
but failed to elect a majority government. The BJP, which had 
tried to tone down its Hindu nationalist rhetoric, won with its 
allies 194, or 37 percent, of the seats announced on May 10. 
The Congress (I) won 136, or 25 percent, of the seats. The 
National Front-Left Front won 110 seats (21 percent), with the 
remaining ninety-four seats (17 percent) going to unaligned 
regional parties, independents, and others. The Congress, 
which had held national power for all but four years since 
1947, received the lowest votes ever as many of its traditional 
Muslim and low-caste constituents defected to other parties 
and high-caste voters sided with the BJP. 



1 



After thirteen days in office as the head of a BJP minority 
government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee resigned on 
May 28, three days before a vote of no confidence would have 
brought down his government. He was succeeded as India's 
eleventh prime minister by the chief minister of Karnataka, the 
Janata Dai's Haradanahalli (H.D.) Deve Gowda, who headed a 
minority coalition with thirteen parties — the United Front — 
made up of some members of the National Front, the Left 
Front, and regional parties. Deve Gowda, a sixty-three-year-old 
civil engineer of middle-class, lower-caste farmer background, 
proclaimed the United Front as representative of India's great 
diversity and reaffirmed his commitment to modern India's 
secular heritage. 

Although the Congress is not part of the left-center coali- 
tion, the United Front is dependent on it for survival. The 
United Front sought Congress and bipartisan support by 
declaring that the economic reforms started by the Congress 
were "irreversible" and committing itself to continued reforms 
and attracting foreign investment. Despite the Congress's elec- 
toral debacle, the party continued to be an important behind- 
the-scenes force in the new government. Former Prime Minis- 
ter Rao's legal problems led him to resign as president of the 
Congress in September 1996. His successor, Sitaram Kesri, 
pledged to continue backing the coalition. 

Because of continuing unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, long- 
awaited special elections for six Lok Sabha seats were held 
under tight security between May 7 and 30. The central govern- 
ment's Election Commission proclaimed that the elections 
were "relatively free and fair" despite the efforts of militants 
and separatists to sabotage them. There were widespread 
reports, however, that Indian security forces had coerced peo- 
ple into voting. In September state-level elections were held in 
Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in nine years. Farooq 
Abdullah's National Conference party won the violence-prone 
contest. 

In foreign affairs, India and Pakistan continued to seek ways 
to reduce tensions between the two nations. Deve Gowda 
offered conciliatory signs to Benazir Bhutto, his counterpart in 
Islamabad, as the two sides moved toward high-level talks. 
Despite the opposition of the United States and the withdrawal 
of technical support from Russia, in April 1996 India com- 
pleted its own design of a 7.5-ton cryogenic engine capable of 
launching rockets with 2,500-kilogram payloads. Such a devel- 



li 



opment was a major technological advance for Indian science 
and gave India the potential to move into the company of the 
other space-exploring nations. India continued to maintain its 
stand in regard to nuclear weapons proliferation and in August 
1996 refused to ratify the United Nations-sponsored Compre- 
hensive Test Ban Treaty unless the treaty required the destruc- 
tion of the world's existing nuclear weapons within a 
prescribed period. To concur with the treaty as it stood, some 
Indian observers felt, would limit the country's sovereignty. 
Meanwhile, several senior active-duty and retired military and 
foreign servicers proposed that India should formally declare 
itself a nuclear-weapons state and give a "no-first-use" assur- 
ance. 



October 1, 1996 James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden 



lii 



Chapter 1. Historical Setting 




A leather puppet from Andhra Pradesh 



THOSE "WHO WEAR COTTON CLOTHES, use the decimal 
system, enjoy the taste of [curried] chicken, play chess, or roll 
dice, and seek peace of mind or tranquility through medita- 
tion," writes historian Stanley Wolpert, "are indebted to India." 
India's deep-rooted civilization may appear exotic or even 
inscrutable to casual foreign observers, but a perceptive indi- 
vidual can see its evolution, shaped by a wide range of factors: 
extreme climatic conditions, a bewildering diversity of people, 
a host of competing political overlords (both local and outsid- 
ers), enduring religious and philosophical beliefs, and com- 
plex linguistic and literary developments that led to the 
flowering of regional and pan-Indian culture during the last 
three millennia. The interplay among a variety of political and 
socioeconomic forces has created a complex amalgam of cul- 
tures that continue amidst conflict; compromise, and adapta- 
tion. "Wherever we turn," says Wolpert, "we find . . . palaces, 
temples, mosques, Victorian railroad stations, Buddhist stupas, 
Mauryan pillars; each century has its unique testaments, often 
standing incongruously close to ruins of another era, some- 
times juxtaposed one atop another, much like the ruins of 
Rome, or Bath." 

India's "great cycle of history," as Professor Hugh Tinker put 
it, entails repeating themes that continue to add complexity 
and diversity to the cultural matrix. Throughout its history, 
India has undergone innumerable episodes involving military 
conquests and integration, cultural infusion and assimilation, 
political unification and fragmentation, religious toleration 
and conflict, and communal harmony and violence. A few 
other regions in the world also can claim such a vast and differ- 
entiated historical experience, but Indian civilization seems to 
have endured the trials of time the longest. India has proven its 
remarkable resilience and its innate ability to reconcile oppos- 
ing elements from many indigenous and foreign cultures. 
Unlike the West, where modern political developments and 
industrialization have created a more secular worldview with 
redefined roles and values for individuals and families, India 
remains largely a traditional society, in which change seems 
only superficial. Although India is the world's largest democ- 
racy and the seventh-most industrialized country in the world, 
the underpinnings of India's civilization stem primarily from its 



3 



India: A Country Study 

own social structure, religious beliefs, philosophical outlook, 
and cultural values. The continuity of those time-honed tradi- 
tional ways of life has provided unique and fascinating patterns 
in the tapestry of contemporary Indian civilization. 

Antecedents 

Harappan Culture 

The earliest imprints of human activities in India go back to 
the Paleolithic Age, roughly between 400,000 and 200,000 B.C. 
Stone implements and cave paintings from this period have 
been discovered in many parts of the South Asia (see fig. 1). 
Evidence of domestication of animals, the adoption of agricul- 
ture, permanent village settlements, and wheel-turned pottery 
dating from the middle of the sixth millennium B.C. has been 
found in the foothills of Sindh and Baluchistan (or Balochistan 
in current Pakistani usage), both in present-day Pakistan. One 
of the first great civilizations — with a writing system, urban cen- 
ters, and a diversified social and economic system — -appeared 
around 3,000 B.C. along the Indus River valley in Punjab (see 
Glossary) and Sindh. It covered more than 800,000 square kilo- 
meters, from the borders of Baluchistan to the deserts of Rajas- 
than, from the Himalayan foothills to the southern tip of 
Gujarat (see fig. 2). The remnants of two major cities — 
Mohenjo-daro and Harappa — reveal remarkable engineering 
feats of uniform urban planning and carefully executed layout, 
water supply, and drainage. Excavations at these sites and later 
archaeological digs at about seventy other locations in India 
and Pakistan provide a composite picture of what is now gener- 
ally known as Harappan culture (2500-1600 B.C.). 

The major cities contained a few large buildings including a 
citadel, a large bath — perhaps for personal and communal 
ablution — differentiated living quarters, flat-roofed brick 
houses, and fortified administrative or religious centers enclos- 
ing meeting halls and granaries. Essentially a city culture, 
Harappan life was supported by extensive agricultural produc- 
tion and by commerce, which included trade with Sumer in 
southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). The people made tools 
and weapons from copper and bronze but not iron. Cotton was 
woven and dyed for clothing; wheat, rice, and a variety of vege- 
tables and fruits were cultivated; and a number of animals, 
including the humped bull, were domesticated. Harappan cul- 
ture was conservative and remained relatively unchanged for 



4 



Historical Setting 



centuries; whenever cities were rebuilt after periodic flooding, 
the new level of construction closely followed the previous pat- 
tern. Although stability, regularity, and conservatism seem to 
have been the hallmarks of this people, it is unclear who 
wielded authority, whether an aristocratic, priestly, or commer- 
cial minority. 

By far the most exquisite but most obscure Harappan arti- 
facts unearthed to date are steatite seals found in abundance at 
Mohenjo-daro. These small, flat, and mostly square objects with 
human or animal motifs provide the most accurate picture 
there is of Harappan life. They also have inscriptions generally 
thought to be in the Harappan script, which has eluded schol- 
arly attempts at deciphering it. Debate abounds as to whether 
the script represents numbers or an alphabet, and, if an alpha- 
bet, whether it is proto-Dravidian or proto-Sanskrit (see Lan- 
guages of India, ch. 4). 

The possible reasons for the decline of Harappan civilization 
have long troubled scholars. Invaders from central and western 
Asia are considered by some historians to have been the 
"destroyers" of Harappan cities, but this view is open to reinter- 
pretation. More plausible explanations are recurrent floods 
caused by tectonic earth movement, soil salinity, and desertifi- 
cation. 

Vedic Aryans 

A series of migrations by Indo-European-speaking semino- 
mads took place during the second millennium B.C. Known as 
Aryans, these preliterate pastoralists spoke an early form of 
Sanskrit, which has close philological similarities to other Indo- 
European languages, such as Avestan in Iran and ancient 
Greek and Latin. The term Aryan meant pure and implied the 
invaders' conscious attempts at retaining their tribal identity 
and roots while maintaining a social distance from earlier 
inhabitants. 

Although archaeology has not yielded proof of the identity 
of the Aryans, the evolution and spread of their culture across 
the Indo-Gangetic Plain is generally undisputed (see Principal 
Regions, ch. 2). Modern knowledge of the early stages of this 
process rests on a body of sacred texts: the four Vedas (collec- 
tions of hymns, prayers, and liturgy), the Brahmanas and the 
Upanishads (commentaries on Vedic rituals and philosophical 
treatises), and the Puranas (traditional mythic-historical 
works). The sanctity accorded to these texts and the manner of 



5 



India: A Country Study 




Present-day international 

boundary 

Settled areas 

O Modern city 

® Excavated city 

• Town 

• Prehistoric site 

50 100 Kilometers 
50 100 Miles 



Source: Based on information from Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of 
South Asia, New York, 1992, 9. 

Figure 2. Indus Valley Culture Sites, ca. 2500-1600 B.C. 

their preservation over several millennia — by an unbroken oral 
tradition — make them part of the living Hindu tradition (see 
Themes in Indian Society, ch. 5). 

These sacred texts offer guidance in piecing together Aryan 
beliefs and activities. The Aryans were a pantheistic people, fol- 
lowing their tribal chieftain or raja, engaging in wars with each 
other or with other alien ethnic groups, and slowly becoming 
settled agriculturalists with consolidated territories and differ- 
entiated occupations. Their skills in using horse-drawn chariots 
and their knowledge of astronomy and mathematics gave them 
a military and technological advantage that led others to 
accept their social customs and religious beliefs (see Science 
and Technology, ch. 6). By around 1,000 B.C., Aryan culture 
had spread over most of India north of the Vindhya Range and 




6 



Historical Setting 



in the process assimilated much from other cultures that pre- 
ceded it (see The Roots of Indian Religion, ch. 3). 

The Aryans brought with them a new language, a new pan- 
theon of anthropomorphic gods, a patrilineal and patriarchal 
family system, and a new social order, built on the religious and 
philosophical rationales of varnashramadharma. Although pre- 
cise translation into English is difficult, the concept varnashra- 
madharma, the bedrock of Indian traditional social 
organization, is built on three fundamental notions: varna 
(originally, "color," but later taken to mean social class — see 
Glossary), ashrama (stages of life such as youth, family life, 
detachment from the material world, and renunciation), and 
dharma (duty, righteousness, or sacred cosmic law). The 
underlying belief is that present happiness and future salvation 
are contingent upon one's ethical or moral conduct; therefore, 
both society and individuals are expected to pursue a diverse 
but righteous path deemed appropriate for everyone based on 
one's birth, age, and station in life (see Caste and Class, ch. 5). 
The original three-tiered society — Brahman (priest; see Glos- 
sary), Kshatriya (warrior), and Vaishya (commoner) — eventu- 
ally expanded into four in order to absorb the subjugated 
people — Shudra (servant) — or even five, when the outcaste 
peoples are considered (see Varna, Caste, and Other Divisions, 
ch. 5). 

The basic unit of Aryan society was the extended and patriar- 
chal family. A cluster of related families constituted a village, 
while several villages formed a tribal unit. Child marriage, as 
practiced in later eras, was uncommon, but the partners' 
involvement in the selection of a mate and dowry and bride- 
price were customary. The birth of a son was welcome because 
he could later tend the herds, bring honor in battle, offer sacri- 
fices to the gods, and inherit property and pass on the family 
name. Monogamy was widely accepted although polygamy was 
not unknown, and even polyandry is mentioned in later writ- 
ings. Ritual suicide of widows was expected at a husband's 
death, and this might have been the beginning of the practice 
known as sati in later centuries, when the widow actually burnt 
herself on her husband's funeral pyre. 

Permanent settlements and agriculture led to trade and 
other occupational differentiation. As lands along the Ganga 
(or Ganges) were cleared, the river became a trade route, the 
numerous settlements on its banks acting as markets. Trade was 
restricted initially to local areas, and barter was an essential 



7 



India: A Country Study 

component of trade, cattle being the unit of value in large-scale 
transactions, which further limited the geographical reach of 
the trader. Custom was law, and kings and chief priests were the 
arbiters, perhaps advised by certain elders of the community. 
An Aryan raja, or king, was primarily a military leader, who 
took a share from the booty after successful cattle raids or bat- 
tles. Although the rajas had managed to assert their authority, 
they scrupulously avoided conflicts with priests as a group, 
whose knowledge and austere religious life surpassed others in 
the community, and the rajas compromised their own interests 
with those of the priests. 

Kingdoms and Empires 

From their original settlements in the Punjab region, the 
Aryans gradually began to penetrate eastward, clearing dense 
forests and establishing "tribal" settlements along the Ganga 
and Yamuna (Jamuna) plains between 1500 and ca. 800 B.C. By 
around 500 B.C., most of northern India was inhabited and 
had been brought under cultivation, facilitating the increasing 
knowledge of the use of iron implements, including ox-drawn 
plows, and spurred by the growing population that provided 
voluntary and forced labor. As riverine and inland trade flour- 
ished, many towns along the Ganga became centers of trade, 
culture, and luxurious living. Increasing population and sur- 
plus production provided the bases for the emergence of inde- 
pendent states with fluid territorial boundaries over which 
disputes frequently arose. 

The rudimentary administrative system headed by tribal 
chieftains was transformed by a number of regional republics 
or hereditary monarchies that devised ways to appropriate rev- 
enue and to conscript labor for expanding the areas of settle- 
ment and agriculture farther east and south, beyond the 
Narmada River. These emergent states collected revenue 
through officials, maintained armies, and built new cities and 
highways. By 600 B.C., sixteen such territorial powers — includ- 
ing the Magadha, Kosala, Kuru, and Gandhara — stretched 
across the North India plains from modern-day Afghanistan to 
Bangladesh. The right of a king to his throne, no matter how it 
was gained, was usually legitimized through elaborate sacrifice 
rituals and genealogies concocted by priests who ascribed to 
the king divine or superhuman origins. 

The victory of good over evil is epitomized in the epic 
Ramayana (The Travels of Rama, or Ram in the preferred mod- 



8 



Historical Setting 



ern form), while another epic, Mahabharata (Great Battle of 
the Descendants of Bharata), spells out the concept of dharma 
and duty. More than 2,500 years later, Mohandas Karamchand 
(Mahatma) Gandhi, the father of modern India, used these 
concepts in the fight for independence (see Mahatma Gandhi, 
this ch.). The Mahabharata records the feud between Aryan 
cousins that culminated in an epic battle in which both gods 
and mortals from many lands allegedly fought to the death, 
and the Ramayana recounts the kidnapping of Sita, Rama's 
wife, by Ravana, a demonic king of Lanka (Sri Lanka), her res- 
cue by her husband (aided by his animal allies), and Rama's 
coronation, leading to a period of prosperity and justice. In the 
late twentieth century, these epics remain dear to the hearts of 
Hindus and are commonly read and enacted in many settings. 
In the 1980s and 1990s, Ram's story has been exploited by 
Hindu militants and politicians to gain power, and the much 
disputed Ramjanmabhumi, the birth site of Ram, has become 
an extremely sensitive communal issue, potentially pitting 
Hindu majority against Muslim minority (see Public Worship, 
ch. 3; Political Issues, ch. 8). 

The Mauryan Empire 

By the end of the sixth century B.C., India's northwest was 
integrated into the Persian Achaemenid Empire and became 
one of its satrapies. This integration marked the beginning of 
administrative contacts between Central Asia and India. 

Although Indian accounts to a large extent ignored Alex- 
ander the Great's Indus campaign in 326 B.C., Greek writers 
recorded their impressions of the general conditions prevailing 
in South Asia during this period. Thus, the year 326 B.C. pro- 
vides the first clear and historically verifiable date in Indian his- 
tory. A two-way cultural fusion between several Indo-Greek 
elements — especially in art, architecture, and coinage — 
occurred in the next several hundred years. North India's polit- 
ical landscape was transformed by the emergence of Magadha 
in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plain. In 322 B.C., Magadha, 
under the rule of Chandragupta Maurya, began to assert its 
hegemony over neighboring areas. Chandragupta, who ruled 
from 324 to 301 B.C., was the architect of the first Indian impe- 
rial power — the Mauryan Empire (326-184 B.C.) — whose capi- 
tal was Pataliputra, near modern-day Patna, in Bihar. 

Situated on rich alluvial soil and near mineral deposits, espe- 
cially iron, Magadha was at the center of bustling commerce 



9 



India: A Country Study 



and trade. The capital was a city of magnificent palaces, tem- 
ples, a university, a library, gardens, and parks, as reported by 
Megasthenes, the third-century B.C. Greek historian and 
ambassador to the Mauryan court. Legend states that Chandra- 
gupta's success was due in large measure to his adviser Kautilya, 
the Brahman author of the Arthashastra (Science of Material 
Gain), a textbook that outlined governmental administration 
and political strategy. There was a highly centralized and hier- 
archical government with a large staff, which regulated tax col- 
lection, trade and commerce, industrial arts, mining, vital 
statistics, welfare of foreigners, maintenance of public places 
including markets and temples, and prostitutes. A large stand- 
ing army and a well-developed espionage system were main- 
tained. The empire was divided into provinces, districts, and 
villages governed by a host of centrally appointed local offi- 
cials, who replicated the functions of the central administra- 
tion. 

Ashoka, grandson of Chandragupta, ruled from 269 to 232 
B.C. and was one of India's most illustrious rulers. Ashoka's 
inscriptions chiseled on rocks and stone pillars located at stra- 
tegic locations throughout his empire — such as Lampaka 
(Laghman in modern Afghanistan), Mahastan (in modern 
Bangladesh), and Brahmagiri (in Karnataka) — constitute the 
second set of datable historical records. According to some of 
the inscriptions, in the aftermath of the carnage resulting from 
his campaign against the powerful kingdom of Kalinga (mod- 
ern Orissa), Ashoka renounced bloodshed and pursued a pol- 
icy of nonviolence or ahimsa, espousing a theory of rule by 
righteousness. His toleration for different religious beliefs and 
languages reflected the realities of India's regional pluralism 
although he personally seems to have followed Buddhism (see 
Buddhism, ch. 3). Early Buddhist stories assert that he con- 
vened a Buddhist council at his capital, regularly undertook 
tours within his realm, and sent Buddhist missionary ambassa- 
dors to Sri Lanka. 

Contacts established with the Hellenistic world during the 
reign of Ashoka's predecessors served him well. He sent diplo- 
matic-cum-religious missions to the rulers of Syria, Macedonia, 
and Epirus, who learned about India's religious traditions, 
especially Buddhism. India's northwest retained many Persian 
cultural elements, which might explain Ashoka's rock inscrip- 
tions — such inscriptions were commonly associated with Per- 
sian rulers. Ashoka's Greek and Aramaic inscriptions found in 



10 



Historical Setting 



Kandahar in Afghanistan may also reveal his desire to maintain 
ties with people outside of India. 

After the disintegration of the Mauryan Empire in the sec- 
ond century B.C., South Asia became a collage of regional pow- 
ers with overlapping boundaries. India's unguarded 
northwestern border again attracted a series of invaders 
between 200 B.C. and A.D. 300. As the Aryans had done, the 
invaders became "Indianized" in the process of their conquest 
and settlement. Also, this period witnessed remarkable intellec- 
tual and artistic achievements inspired by cultural diffusion 
and syncretism. The Indo-Greeks, or the Bactrians, of the 
northwest contributed to the development of numismatics; 
they were followed by another group, the Shakas (or Scyth- 
ians), from the steppes of Central Asia, who settled in western 
India. Still other nomadic people, the Yuezhi, who were forced 
out of the Inner Asian steppes of Mongolia, drove the Shakas 
out of northwestern India and established the Kushana King- 
dom (first century B.C. -third century A.D.) . The Kushana 
Kingdom controlled parts of Afghanistan and Iran, and in 
India the realm stretched from Purushapura (modern Pesha- 
war, Pakistan) in the northwest, to Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) in 
the east, and to Sanchi (Madhya Pradesh) in the south. For a 
short period, the kingdom reached still farther east, to 
Pataliputra. The Kushana Kingdom was the crucible of trade 
among the Indian, Persian, Chinese, and Roman empires and 
controlled a critical part of the legendary Silk Road. Kanishka, 
who reigned for two decades starting around A.D. 78, was the 
most noteworthy Kushana ruler. He converted to Buddhism 
and convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir. The Kusha- 
nas were patrons of Gandharan art, a synthesis between Greek 
and Indian styles, and Sanskrit literature. They initiated a new 
era called Shaka in A.D. 78, and their calendar, which was for- 
mally recognized by India for civil purposes starting on March 
22, 1957, is still in use. 

The Deccan and the South 

During the Kushana Dynasty, an indigenous power, the Sata- 
vahana Kingdom (first century B.C. -third century A.D. ), rose 
in the Deccan in southern India. The Satavahana, or Andhra, 
Kingdom was considerably influenced by the Mauryan political 
model, although power was decentralized in the hands of local 
chieftains, who used the symbols of Vedic religion and upheld 
the varnashramadharma. The rulers, however, were eclectic and 



11 



India: A Country Study 

patronized Buddhist monuments, such as those in Ellora 
(Maharashtra) and Amaravati (Andhra Pradesh). Thus, the 
Deccan served as a bridge through which politics, trade, and 
religious ideas could spread from the north to the south. 

Farther south were three ancient Tamil kingdoms — Chera 
(on the west), Chola (on the east), and Pandya (in the 
south) — frequently involved in internecine warfare to gain 
regional supremacy. They are mentioned in Greek and Asho- 
kan sources as lying at the fringes of the Mauryan Empire. A 
corpus of ancient Tamil literature, known as Sangam (acad- 
emy) works, including Tolkappiam, a manual of Tamil grammar 
by Tolkappiyar, provides much useful information about their 
social life from 300 B.C. to A.D. 200. There is clear evidence of 
encroachment by Aryan traditions from the north into a pre- 
dominantly indigenous Dravidian culture in transition. 

Dravidian social order was based on different ecoregions 
rather than on the Aryan varna paradigm, although the Brah- 
mans had a high status at a very early stage. Segments of society 
were characterized by matriarchy and matrilineal succession — 
which survived well into the nineteenth century — cross-cousin 
marriage, and strong regional identity. Tribal chieftains 
emerged as "kings" just as people moved from pastoralism 
toward agriculture, sustained by irrigation based on rivers, 
small-scale tanks (as man-made ponds are called in India) and 
wells, and brisk maritime trade with Rome and Southeast Asia. 

Discoveries of Roman gold coins in various sites attest to 
extensive South Indian links with the outside world. As with 
Pataliputra in the northeast and Taxila in the northwest (in 
modern Pakistan), the city of Madurai, the Pandyan capital (in 
modern Tamil Nadu), was the center of intellectual and liter- 
ary activities. Poets and bards assembled there under royal 
patronage at successive concourses and composed anthologies 
of poems, most of which have been lost. By the end of the first 
century B.C., South Asia was crisscrossed by overland trade 
routes, which facilitated the movements of Buddhist and Jain 
missionaries and other travelers and opened the area to a syn- 
thesis of many cultures (seejainism, ch. 3). 

The Classical Age 

Gupta and Harsha 

The Classical Age refers to the period when most of North 
India was reunited under the Gupta Empire (ca. A.D. 320- 



12 



Historical Setting 



550). Because of the relative peace, law and order, and exten- 
sive cultural achievements during this period, it has been 
described as a "golden age" that crystallized the elements of 
what is generally known as Hindu culture with all its variety, 
contradiction, and synthesis. The golden age was confined to 
the north, and the classical patterns began to spread south only 
after the Gupta Empire had vanished from the historical scene. 
The military exploits of the first three rulers — Chandragupta I 
(ca. 319-335), Samudragupta (ca. 335-376), and Chandra- 
gupta II (ca. 376-415) — brought all of North India under their 
leadership. From Pataliputra, their capital, they sought to 
retain political preeminence as much by pragmatism and judi- 
cious marriage alliances as by military strength. Despite their 
self-conferred titles, their overlordship was threatened and by 
500 ultimately ruined by the Hunas (a branch of the White 
Huns emanating from Central Asia), who were yet another 
group in the long succession of ethnically and culturally differ- 
ent outsiders drawn into India and then woven into the hybrid 
Indian fabric. 

Under Harsha Vardhana (or Harsha, r. 606-47), North India 
was reunited briefly, but neither the Guptas nor Harsha con- 
trolled a centralized state, and their administrative styles rested 
on the collaboration of regional and local officials for adminis- 
tering their rule rather than on centrally appointed personnel. 
The Gupta period marked a watershed of Indian culture: the 
Guptas performed Vedic sacrifices to legitimize their rule, but 
they also patronized Buddhism, which continued to provide an 
alternative to Brahmanical orthodoxy. 

The most significant achievements of this period, however, 
were in religion, education, mathematics, art, and Sanskrit lit- 
erature and drama. The religion that later developed into 
modern Hinduism witnessed a crystallization of its compo- 
nents: major sectarian deities, image worship, devotionalism, 
and the importance of the temple. Education included gram- 
mar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, 
and astronomy. These subjects became highly specialized and 
reached an advanced level. The Indian numeral system — some- 
times erroneously attributed to the Arabs, who took it from 
India to Europe where it replaced the Roman system — and the 
decimal system are Indian inventions of this period. Arya- 
bhatta's expositions on astronomy in 499, moreover, gave calcu- 
lations of the solar year and the shape and movement of astral 
bodies with remarkable accuracy. In medicine, Charaka and 



13 



India: A Country Study 

Sushruta wrote about a fully evolved system, resembling those 
of Hippocrates and Galen in Greece. Although progress in 
physiology and biology was hindered by religious injunctions 
against contact with dead bodies, which discouraged dissection 
and anatomy, Indian physicians excelled in pharmacopoeia, 
caesarean section, bone setting, and skin grafting (see Science 
and Technology, ch. 6). 

The Southern Rivals 

When Gupta disintegration was complete, the classical pat- 
terns of civilization continued to thrive not only in the middle 
Ganga Valley and the kingdoms that emerged on the heels of 
Gupta demise but also in the Deccan and in South India, which 
acquired a more prominent place in history. In fact, from the 
mid-seventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries, regionalism was 
the dominant theme of political or dynastic history of South 
Asia. Three features, as political scientist Radha Champakalak- 
shmi has noted, commonly characterize the sociopolitical reali- 
ties of this period. First, the spread of Brahmanical religions 
was a two-way process of Sanskritization of local cults and local- 
ization of Brahmanical social order. Second was the ascendancy 
of the Brahman priestly and landowning groups that later dom- 
inated regional institutions and political developments. Third, 
because of the seesawing of numerous dynasties that had a 
remarkable ability to survive perennial military attacks, 
regional kingdoms faced frequent defeats but seldom total 
annihilation. 

Peninsular India was involved in an eighth-century tripartite 
power struggle among the Chalukyas (556-757) of Vatapi, the 
Pallavas (300-888) of Kanchipuram, and the Pandyas (seventh 
through the tenth centuries) of Madurai. The Chalukya rulers 
were overthrown by their subordinates, the Rashtrakutas, who 
ruled from 753 to 973. Although both the Pallava and Pandya 
kingdoms were enemies, the real struggle for political domina- 
tion was between the Pallava and Chalukya realms. 

Despite interregional conflicts, local autonomy was pre- 
served to a far greater degree in the south where it had pre- 
vailed for centuries. The absence of a highly centralized 
government was associated with a corresponding local auton- 
omy in the administration of villages and districts. Extensive 
and well-documented overland and maritime trade flourished 
with the Arabs on the west coast and with Southeast Asia. Trade 
facilitated cultural diffusion in Southeast Asia, where local 



14 



Historical Setting 



elites selectively but willingly adopted Indian art, architecture, 
literature, and social customs. 

The interdynastic rivalry and seasonal raids into each other's 
territory notwithstanding, the rulers in the Deccan and South 
India patronized all three religions — Buddhism, Hinduism, 
and Jainism. The religions vied with each other for royal favor, 
expressed in land grants but more importantly in the creation 
of monumental temples, which remain architectural wonders. 
The cave temples of Elephanta Island (near Bombay, or Mum- 
bai in Marathi) , Ajanta, and Ellora (in Maharashtra), and struc- 
tural temples of Kanchipuram (in Tamil Nadu) are enduring 
legacies of otherwise warring regional rulers. By the mid-sev- 
enth century, Buddhism and Jainism began to decline as sectar- 
ian Hindu devotional cults of Shiva and Vishnu vigorously 
competed for popular support. 

Although Sanskrit was the language of learning and theol- 
ogy in South India, as it was in the north, the growth of the 
bhakti (devotional) movements enhanced the crystallization of 
vernacular literature in all four major Dravidian languages: 
Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada; they often borrowed 
themes and vocabulary from Sanskrit but preserved much local 
cultural lore. Examples of Tamil literature include two major 
poems, Cilappatikaram (The Jewelled Anklet) and Manimekalai 
(The Jewelled Belt); the body of devotional literature of 
Shaivism and Vaishnavism — Hindu devotional movements; and 
the reworking of the Ramayana by Kamban in the twelfth cen- 
tury. A nationwide cultural synthesis had taken place with a 
minimum of common characteristics in the various regions of 
South Asia, but the process of cultural infusion and assimila- 
tion would continue to shape and influence India's history 
through the centuries. 

The Delhi Sultanate 

The Coming of Islam 

Islam was propagated by the Prophet Muhammad during 
the early seventh century in the deserts of Arabia. Less than a 
century after its inception, Islam's presence was felt through- 
out the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Iran, and Central 
Asia. Arab military forces conquered the Indus Delta region in 
Sindh in 711 and established an Indo-Muslim state there. 
Sindh became an Islamic outpost where Arabs established 
trade links with the Middle East and were later joined by teach- 



15 



India: A Country Study 

ers or sufis (see Glossary), but Arab influence was hardly felt in 
the rest of South Asia (see Islam, ch. 3) . By the end of the tenth 
century, dramatic changes took place when the Central Asian 
Turkic tribes accepted both the message and mission of Islam. 
These warlike people first began to move into Afghanistan and 
Iran and later into India through the northwest. Mahmud of 
Ghazni (971-1030), who was also known as the "Sword of 
Islam," mounted seventeen plundering expeditions between 
997 and 1027 into North India, annexing Punjab as his eastern 
province. The invaders' effective use of the crossbow while at a 
gallop gave them a decisive advantage over their Indian oppo- 
nents, the Rajputs. Mahmud's conquest of Punjab foretold omi- 
nous consequences for the rest of India, but the Rajputs appear 
to have been both unprepared and unwilling to change their 
military tactics, which ultimately collapsed in the face of the 
swift and punitive cavalry of the Afghans and Turkic peoples. 

In the thirteenth century, Shams-ud-Din Iletmish (or Iltut- 
mish; r. 1211-36), a former slave-warrior, established a Turkic 
kingdom in Delhi, which enabled future sultans to push in 
every direction; within the next 100 years, the Delhi Sultanate 
extended its sway east to Bengal and south to the Deccan, while 
the sultanate itself experienced repeated threats from the 
northwest and internal revolts from displeased, independent- 
minded nobles. The sultanate was in constant flux as five dynas- 
ties rose and fell: Mamluk or Slave (1206-90), Khalji (1290- 
1320), Tughluq (1320-1413), Sayyid (1414-51), and Lodi 
(1451-1526). The Khalji Dynasty under Ala-ud-Din (r. 1296- 
1315) succeeded in bringing most of South India under its con- 
trol for a time, although conquered areas broke away quickly. 
Power in Delhi was often gained by violence — nineteen of the 
thirty-five sultans were assassinated — and was legitimized by 
reward for tribal loyalty. Factional rivalries and court intrigues 
were as numerous as they were treacherous; territories con- 
trolled by the sultan expanded and shrank depending on his 
personality and fortunes. 

Both the Quran and sharia (Islamic law) provided the basis 
for enforcing Islamic administration over the independent 
Hindu rulers, but the sultanate made only fitful progress in the 
beginning, when many campaigns were undertaken for plun- 
der and temporary reduction of fortresses. The effective rule 
of a sultan depended largely on his ability to control the strate- 
gic places that dominated the military highways and trade 
routes, extract the annual land tax, and maintain personal 



16 



Wrought-iron pillar erected in 
honor of Vishnu by Gupta 
monarch Chandragupta II ( ca. 
A.D. 376-415), located near 
the Qutb Minar, New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



authority over military and provincial governors. Sultan Ala-ud- 
Din made an attempt to reassess, systematize, and unify land 
revenues and urban taxes and to institute a highly centralized 
system of administration over his realm, but his efforts were 
abortive. Although agriculture in North India improved as a 
result of new canal construction and irrigation methods, 
including what came to be known as the Persian wheel, pro- 
longed political instability and parasitic methods of tax collec- 
tion brutalized the peasantry. Yet trade and a market economy, 
encouraged by the free-spending habits of the aristocracy, 
acquired new impetus both inland and overseas. Experts in 
metalwork, stonework, and textile manufacture responded to 
the new patronage with enthusiasm. 

Southern Dynasties 

The sultans' failure to hold securely the Deccan and South 
India resulted in the rise of competing southern dynasties: the 
Muslim Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1527) and the Hindu Vija- 
yanagar Empire (1336-1565). Zafar Khan, a former provincial 
governor under the Tughluqs, revolted against his Turkic over- 
lord and proclaimed himself sultan, taking the title Ala-ud-Din 
Bahman Shah in 1347. The Bahmani Sultanate, located in the 
northern Deccan, lasted for almost two centuries, until it frag- 




17 



India: A Country Study 

merited into five smaller states in 1527. The Bahmani Sultanate 
adopted the patterns established by the Delhi overlords in tax 
collection and administration, but its downfall was caused in 
large measure by the competition and hatred between deccani 
(domiciled Muslim immigrants and local converts) and 
paradesi (foreigners or officials in temporary service). The Bah- 
mani Sultanate initiated a process of cultural synthesis visible in 
Hyderabad, where cultural flowering is still expressed in vigor- 
ous schools of deccani architecture and painting. 

Founded in 1336, the empire of Vijayanagar (named for its 
capital Vijayanagar, "City of Victory," in present-day Karnataka) 
expanded rapidly toward Madurai in the south and Goa in the 
west and exerted intermittent control over the east coast and 
the extreme southwest. Vijayanagar rulers closely followed 
Chola precedents, especially in collecting agricultural and 
trade revenues, in giving encouragement to commercial guilds, 
and in honoring temples with lavish endowments. Added reve- 
nue needed for waging war against the Bahmani sultans was 
raised by introducing a set of taxes on commercial enterprises, 
professions, and industries. Political rivalry between the Bah- 
mani and the Vijayanagar rulers involved control over the 
Krishna-Tunghabadhra river basin, which shifted hands 
depending on whose military was superior at any given time. 
The Vijayanagar rulers' capacity for gaining victory over their 
enemies was contingent on ensuring a constant supply of 
horses — initially through Arab traders but later through the 
Portuguese — and maintaining internal roads and communica- 
tion networks. Merchant guilds enjoyed a wide sphere of opera- 
tion and were able to offset the power of landlords and 
Brahmans in court politics. Commerce and shipping eventually 
passed largely into the hands of foreigners, and special facili- 
ties and tax concessions were provided for them by the ruler. 
Arabs and Portuguese competed for influence and control of 
west coast ports, and, in 1510, Goa passed into Portuguese pos- 
session. 

The city of Vijayanagar itself contained numerous temples 
with rich ornamentation, especially the gateways, and a cluster 
of shrines for the deities. Most prominent among the temples 
was the one dedicated to Virupaksha, a manifestation of Shiva, 
the patron-deity of the Vijayanagar rulers. Temples continued 
to be the nuclei of diverse cultural and intellectual activities, 
but these activities were based more on tradition than on con- 
temporary political realities. (However, the first Vijayanagar 



18 



Cow consuming left-over offerings in 1, OOO-pillared hall, an example 
of the Vij ay anagar style of architecture, Madurai, Tamil Nadu 
Courtesy World Transportation Commission Collection, 

Library of Congress 



ruler — Harihara I — was a Hindu who converted to Islam and 
then reconverted to Hinduism for political expediency.) The 
temples sponsored no intellectual exchange with Islamic theo- 
logians because Muslims were generally assigned to an 
"impure" status and were thus excluded from entering temples. 
When the five rulers of what was once the Bahmani Sultanate 
combined their forces and attacked Vijayanagar in 1565, the 
empire crumbled at the Battle of Talikot. 

The Mughal Era 
The Mughals 

In the early sixteenth century, descendants of the Mongol, 



19 



India: A Country Study 



Turkish, Iranian, and Afghan invaders of South Asia — the 
Mughals — invaded India under the leadership of Zahir-ud-Din 
Babur. Babur was the great-grandson of Timur Lenk (Timur 
the Lame, from which the Western name Tamerlane is 
derived), who had invaded India and plundered Delhi in 1398 
and then led a short-lived empire based in Samarkand (in mod- 
ern-day Uzbekistan) that united Persian-based Mongols 
(Babur's maternal ancestors) and other West Asian peoples. 
Babur was driven from Samarkand and initially established his 
rule in Kabul in 1504; he later became the first Mughal ruler 
(1526-30). His determination was to expand eastward into 
Punjab, where he had made a number of forays. Then an invi- 
tation from an opportunistic Afghan chief in Punjab brought 
him to the very heart of the Delhi Sultanate, ruled by Ibrahim 
Lodi (1517-26). Babur, a seasoned military commander, 
entered India in 1526 with his well-trained veteran army of 
12,000 to meet the sultan's huge but unwieldy and disunited 
force of more than 100,000 men. Babur defeated the Lodi sul- 
tan decisively at Panipat (in modern-day Haryana, about ninety 
kilometers north of Delhi). Employing gun carts, moveable 
artillery, and superior cavalry tactics, Babur achieved a 
resounding victory. A year later, he decisively defeated a Rajput 
confederacy led by Rana Sangha. In 1529 Babur routed the 
joint forces of Afghans and the sultan of Bengal but died in 
1530 before he could consolidate his military gains. He left 
behind as legacies his memoirs {Babur N amah) , several beauti- 
ful gardens in Kabul, Lahore, and Agra, and descendants who 
would fulfill his dream of establishing an empire in Hindustan. 

When Babur died, his son Humayun (1530-56), also a sol- 
dier, inherited a difficult task. He was pressed from all sides by 
a reassertion of Afghan claims to the Delhi throne, by disputes 
over his own succession, and by the Afghan-Rajput march into 
Delhi in 1540. He fled to Persia, where he spent nearly ten 
years as an embarrassed guest at the Safavid court. In 1545 he 
gained a foothold in Kabul, reasserted his Indian claim, 
defeated Sher Khan Sur, the most powerful Afghan ruler, and 
took control of Delhi in 1555. 

Humayun's untimely death in 1556 left the task of further 
imperial conquest and consolidation to his thirteen-year-old 
son, Jalal-ud-Din Akbar (r. 1556-1605). Following a decisive 
military victory at the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556, the 
regent Bayram Khan pursued a vigorous policy of expansion 
on Akbar's behalf. As soon as Akbar came of age, he began to 



20 



Historical Setting 



free himself from the influences of overbearing ministers, 
court factions, and harem intrigues, and demonstrated his own 
capacity for judgment and leadership. A "workaholic" who sel- 
dom slept more than three hours a night, he personally over- 
saw the implementation of his administrative policies, which 
were to form the backbone of the Mughal Empire for more 
than 200 years. He continued to conquer, annex, and consoli- 
date a far-flung territory bounded by Kabul in the northwest, 
Kashmir in the north, Bengal in the east, and beyond the Nar- 
mada River in the south — an area comparable in size to the 
Mauryan territory some 1,800 years earlier (see fig. 3). 

Akbar built a walled capital called Fatehpur Sikri (Fatehpur 
means Fortress of Victory) near Agra, starting in 1571. Palaces 
for each of Akbar's senior queens, a huge artificial lake, and 
sumptuous water-filled courtyards were built there. The city, 
however, proved short-lived, perhaps because the water supply 
was insufficient or of poor quality, or, as some historians 
believe, Akbar had to attend to the northwest areas of his 
empire and simply moved his capital for political reasons. 
Whatever the reason, in 1585 the capital was relocated to 
Lahore and in 1599 to Agra. 

Akbar adopted two distinct but effective approaches in 
administering a large territory and incorporating various eth- 
nic groups into the service of his realm. In 1580 he obtained 
local revenue statistics for the previous decade in order to 
understand details of productivity and price fluctuation of dif- 
ferent crops. Aided by Todar Mai, a Rajput king, Akbar issued a 
revenue schedule that the peasantry could tolerate while pro- 
viding maximum profit for the state. Revenue demands, fixed 
according to local conventions of cultivation and quality of soil, 
ranged from one-third to one-half of the crop and were paid in 
cash. Akbar relied heavily on land-holding zamindars (see Glos- 
sary) . They used their considerable local knowledge and influ- 
ence to collect revenue and to transfer it to the treasury, 
keeping a portion in return for services rendered. Within his 
administrative system, the warrior aristocracy (mansabdars) 
held ranks (mansabs) expressed in numbers of troops, and indi- 
cating pay, armed contingents, and obligations. The warrior 
aristocracy was generally paid from revenues of nonhereditary 
and transferrable jagirs (revenue villages). 

An astute ruler who genuinely appreciated the challenges of 
administering so vast an empire, Akbar introduced a policy of 
reconciliation and assimilation of Hindus (including Maryam 



21 



Approximate limit of 
Mughal Empire 




Source: Based on information from Joseph E. Schwartzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of 
South Asia, New York, 1992, 46. 

Figure 3. Mughal Empire, Late Seventeenth Century 

al-Zamani, the Hindu Rajput mother of his son and heir, Jahan- 
gir), who represented the majority of the population. He 
recruited and rewarded Hindu chiefs with the highest ranks in 
government; encouraged intermarriages between Mughal and 
Rajput aristocracy; allowed new temples to be built; personally 



22 



Historical Setting 



participated in celebrating Hindu festivals such as Dipavali, or 
Diwali, the festival of lights; and abolished the jizya (poll tax) 
imposed on non-Muslims. Akbar came up with his own theory 
of "rulership as a divine illumination," enshrined in his new 
religion Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith), incorporating the principle 
of acceptance of all religions and sects. He encouraged widow 
marriage, discouraged child marriage, outlawed the practice of 
sati, and persuaded Delhi merchants to set up special market 
days for women, who otherwise were secluded at home (see 
Veiling and the Seclusion of Women, ch. 5). By the end of 
Akbar's reign, the Mughal Empire extended throughout most 
of India north of the Godavari River. The exceptions were 
Gondwana in central India, which paid tribute to the Mughals, 
and Assam, in the northeast. 

Mughal rule under Jahangir (1605-27) and Shah Jahan 
(1628-58) was noted for political stability, brisk economic activ- 
ity, beautiful paintings, and monumental buildings. Jahangir 
married the Persian princess whom he renamed Nur Jahan 
(Light of the World), who emerged as the most powerful indi- 
vidual in the court besides the emperor. As a result, Persian 
poets, artists, scholars, and officers — including her own family 
members — lured by the Mughal court's brilliance and luxury, 
found asylum in India. The number of unproductive, time- 
serving officers mushroomed, as did corruption, while the 
excessive Persian representation upset the delicate balance of 
impartiality at the court. Jahangir liked Hindu festivals but pro- 
moted mass conversion to Islam; he persecuted the followers of 
Jainism and even executed Guru (see Glossary) Arjun Das, the 
fifth saint-teacher of the Sikhs (see Sikhism, ch. 3). Nurjahan's 
abortive schemes to secure the throne for the prince of her 
choice led Shah Jahan to rebel in 1622. In that same year, the 
Persians took over Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, an event 
that struck a serious blow to Mughal prestige. 

Between 1636 and 1646, Shah Jahan sent Mughal armies to 
conquer the Deccan and the northwest beyond the Khyber 
Pass. Even though they demonstrated Mughal military 
strength, these campaigns consumed the imperial treasury. As 
the state became a huge military machine, whose nobles and 
their contingents multiplied almost fourfold, so did its 
demands for more revenue from the peasantry. Political unifi- 
cation and maintenance of law and order over wide areas 
encouraged the emergence of large centers of commerce and 
crafts — such as Lahore, Delhi, Agra, and Ahmadabad — linked 



23 



India: A Country Study 

by roads and waterways to distant places and ports. The world- 
famous Taj Mahal was built in Agra during Shah Jahan's reign 
as a tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It symbolizes 
both Mughal artistic achievement and excessive financial 
expenditures when resources were shrinking. The economic 
position of peasants and artisans did not improve because the 
administration failed to produce any lasting change in the 
existing social structure. There was no incentive for the reve- 
nue officials, whose concerns primarily were personal or famil- 
ial gain, to generate resources independent of dominant 
Hindu zamindars and village leaders, whose self-interest and 
local dominance prevented them from handing over the full 
amount of revenue to the imperial treasury. In their ever- 
greater dependence on land revenue, the Mughals unwittingly 
nurtured forces that eventually led to the break-up of their 
empire. 

The last of the great Mughals was Aurangzeb (r. 1658-1707), 
who seized the throne by killing all his brothers and imprison- 
ing his own father. During his fifty-year reign, the empire 
reached its utmost physical limit but also witnessed the unmis- 
takable symptoms of decline. The bureaucracy had grown 
bloated and excessively corrupt, and the huge and unwieldy 
army demonstrated outdated weaponry and tactics. Aurangzeb 
was not the ruler to restore the dynasty's declining fortunes or 
glory. Awe-inspiring but lacking in the charisma needed to 
attract outstanding lieutenants, he was driven to extend 
Mughal rule over most of South Asia and to reestablish Islamic 
orthodoxy by adopting a reactionary attitude toward those 
Muslims whom he had suspected of compromising their faith. 

Aurangzeb was involved in a series of protracted wars — 
against the Pathans in Afghanistan, the sultans of Bijapur and 
Golkonda in the Deccan, and the Marathas in Maharashtra. 
Peasant uprisings and revolts by local leaders became all too 
common, as did the conniving of the nobles to preserve their 
own status at the expense of a steadily weakening empire. The 
increasing association of his government with Islam further 
drove a wedge between the ruler and his Hindu subjects. 
Aurangzeb forbade the building of new temples, destroyed a 
number of them, and reimposed the jizya. A puritan and a cen- 
sor of morals, he banned music at court, abolished ceremonies, 
and persecuted the Sikhs in Punjab. These measures alienated 
so many that even before he died challenges for power had 
already begun to escalate. Contenders for the Mughal throne 



24 



Akbar, the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 

1556 to 1605 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

fought each other, and the short-lived reigns of Aurangzeb's 
successors were strife-filled. The Mughal Empire experienced 
dramatic reverses as regional governors broke away and 
founded independent kingdoms. The Mughals had to make 
peace with Maratha rebels, and Persian and Afghan armies 
invaded Delhi, carrying away many treasures, including the 
Peacock Throne in 1739. 



25 



India: A Country Study 
The Marathas 

The tale of the Marathas' rise to power and their eventual 
fall contains all the elements of a thriller: adventure, intrigue, 
and romanticism. Maratha chieftains were originally in the ser- 
vice of Bijapur sultans in the western Deccan, which was under 
siege by the Mughals. Shivaji Bhonsle (1627-80), a tenacious 
and fierce fighter recognized as the "father of the Maratha 
nation," took advantage of this conflict and carved out his own 
principality near Pune, which later became the Maratha capi- 
tal. Adopting guerrilla tactics, he waylaid caravans in order to 
sustain and expand his army, which soon had money, arms, and 
horses. Shivaji led a series of successful assaults in the 1660s 
against Mughal strongholds, including the major port of Surat. 
In 1674 he assumed the title of "Lord of the Universe" at his 
elaborate coronation, which signaled his determination to 
challenge the Mughal forces as well as to reestablish a Hindu 
kingdom in Maharashtra, the land of his origin. Shivaji's battle 
cries were swaraj (translated variously as freedom, self-rule, 
independence), swadharma (religious freedom), and goraksha 
(cow protection). Aurangzeb relentlessly pursued Shivaji's suc- 
cessors between 1681 and 1705 but eventually retreated to the 
north as his treasury became depleted and as thousands of lives 
had been lost either on the battlefield or to natural calamines. 
In 1717 a Mughal emissary signed a treaty with the Marathas 
confirming their claims to rule in the Deccan in return for 
acknowledging the fictional Mughal suzerainty and remission 
of annual taxes. Yet the Marathas soon captured Malwa from 
Mughal control and later moved east into Orrisa and Bengal; 
southern India also came under their domain. Recognition of 
their political power finally came when the Mughal emperor 
invited them to act as auxiliaries in the internal affairs of the 
empire and still later to help the emperor in driving the 
Afghans out of Punjab. 

The Marathas, despite their military prowess and leadership, 
were not equipped to administer the state or to undertake 
socioeconomic reform. Pursuing a policy characterized by 
plunder and indiscriminate raids, they antagonized the peas- 
ants. They were primarily suited for stirring the Maharashtrian 
regional pride rather than for attracting loyalty to an all-India 
confederacy. They were left virtually alone before the invading 
Afghan forces, headed by Ahmad Shah Abdali (later called 
Ahmad Shah Durrani), who routed them on the blood- 
drenched battlefield at Panipat in 1761. The shock of defeat 



26 



Historical Setting 



hastened the break-up of their loosely knit confederacy into 
five independent states and extinguished the hope of Maratha 
dominance in India. 

The Sikhs 

The Afghan defeat of the Maratha armies accelerated the 
breakaway of Punjab from Delhi and helped the founding of 
Sikh overlordship in the northwest. Rooted in the bhakti move- 
ments that developed in the second century B.C. but swept 
across North India during the fifteenth and sixteenth centu- 
ries, the Sikh religion appealed to the hard-working peasants. 
The Sikh khalsa (army of the pure) rose up against the eco- 
nomic and political repressions in Punjab toward the end of 
Aurangzeb's rule. Guerrilla fighters took advantage of the 
political instability created by the Persian and Afghan 
onslaught against Delhi, enriching themselves and expanding 
territorial control. By the 1770s, Sikh hegemony extended 
from the Indus in the west to the Yamuna in the east, from Mul- 
tan in the south to Jammu in the north. But the Sikhs, like the 
Marathas, were a loose, disunited, and quarrelsome conglom- 
erate of twelve kin-groups. It took Ranjit Singh (1780-1839), 
an individual with modernizing vision and leadership, to 
achieve supremacy over the other kin-groups and establish his 
kingdom in which Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims lived together 
in comparative equality and increasing prosperity. Ranjit Singh 
employed European officers and introduced strict military dis- 
cipline into his army before expanding into Afghanistan, Kash- 
mir, and Ladakh. 

The Coming of the Europeans 

The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to 
Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese 
voyager, arrived in Calicut (modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the 
west coast. In their search for spices and Christian converts, the 
Portuguese challenged Arab supremacy in the Indian Ocean, 
and, with their galleons fitted with powerful cannons, set up a 
network of strategic trading posts along the Arabian Sea and 
the Persian Gulf. In 1510 the Portuguese took over the enclave 
of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and 
political power in India and which they controlled for nearly 
four and a half centuries. 

Economic competition among the European nations led to 
the founding of commercial companies in England (the East 



27 



India: A Country Study 



India Company, founded in 1600) and in the Netherlands 
(Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie — the United East India 
Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim was to capture 
the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in Asia. 
Although the Dutch, with a large supply of capital and support 
from their government, preempted and ultimately excluded 
the British from the heartland of spices in the East Indies 
(modern-day Indonesia), both companies managed to estab- 
lish trading "factories" (actually warehouses) along the Indian 
coast. The Dutch, for example, used various ports on the Coro- 
mandel Coast in South India, especially Pulicat (about twenty 
kilometers north of Madras), as major sources for slaves for 
their plantations in the East Indies and for cotton cloth as early 
as 1609. (The English, however, established their first factory at 
what today is known as Madras only in 1639.) Indian rulers 
enthusiastically accommodated the newcomers in hopes of pit- 
ting them against the Portuguese. In 1619 Jahangir granted 
them permission to trade in his territories at Surat (in Gujarat) 
on the west coast and Hughli (in West Bengal) in the east. 
These and other locations on the peninsula became centers of 
international trade in spices, cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter, 
calico, and indigo. 

English company agents became familiar with Indian cus- 
toms and languages, including Persian, the unifying official 
language under the Mughals. In many ways, the English agents 
of that period lived like Indians, intermarried willingly, and a 
large number of them never returned to their home country. 
The knowledge of India thus acquired and the mutual ties 
forged with Indian trading groups gave the English a competi- 
tive edge over other Europeans. The French commercial inter- 
est — Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India Company, 
founded in 1664) — came late, but the French also established 
themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their com- 
petitors as they founded their enclave at Pondicherry (Puduch- 
cheri) on the Coramandel Coast. 

In 1 71 7 the Mughal emperor, Farrukh-siyar (r. 1713-19), 
gave the British — who by then had already established them- 
selves in the south and the west — a grant of thirty-eight villages 
near Calcutta, acknowledging their importance to the continu- 
ity of international trade in the Bengal economy. As did the 
Dutch and the French, the British brought silver bullion and 
copper to pay for transactions, helping the smooth functioning 
of the Mughal revenue system and increasing the benefits to 



28 



Historical Setting 



local artisans and traders. The fortified warehouses of the Brit- 
ish brought extraterritorial status, which enabled them to 
administer their own civil and criminal laws and offered 
numerous employment opportunities as well as asylum to for- 
eigners and Indians. The British factories successfully com- 
peted with their rivals as their size and population grew. The 
original clusters of fishing villages (Madras and Calcutta) or 
series of islands (Bombay) became headquarters of the British 
administrative zones, or presidencies as they generally came to 
be known. The factories and their immediate environs, known 
as the White-town, represented the actual and symbolic preem- 
inence of the British — in terms of their political power — as well 
as their cultural values and social practices; meanwhile, their 
Indian collaborators lived in the Black-town, separated from 
the factories by several kilometers. 

The British company employed sepoys — European-trained 
and European-led Indian soldiers — to protect its trade, but 
local rulers sought their services to settle scores in regional 
power struggles. South India witnessed the first open confron- 
tation between the British and the French, whose forces were 
led by Robert Clive and Francois Dupleix, respectively. Both 
companies desired to place their own candidate as the nawab, 
or ruler, of Arcot, the area around Madras. At the end of a pro- 
tracted struggle between 1744 and 1763, when the Peace of 
Paris was signed, the British gained an upper hand over the 
French and installed their man in power, supporting him fur- 
ther with arms and lending large sums as well. The French and 
the British also backed different factions in the succession 
struggle for Mughal viceroyalty in Bengal, but Clive intervened 
successfully and defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-daula in the Battle of 
Plassey (Palashi, about 150 kilometers north of Calcutta) in 
1757. Clive found help from a combination of vested interests 
that opposed the existing nawab: disgruntled soldiers, land- 
holders, and influential merchants whose commercial profits 
were closely linked to British fortunes. 

Later, Clive defeated the Mughal forces at Buxar (Baksar, 
west of Patna in Bihar) in 1765, and the Mughal emperor 
(Shah Alam, r. 1759-1806) conferred on the company adminis- 
trative rights over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, a region of 
roughly 25 million people with an annual revenue of 40 million 
rupees (for current value of the rupee — see Glossary). The 
imperial grant virtually established the company as a sovereign 
power, and Clive became the first British governor of Bengal. 



29 



India: A Country Study 

Besides the presence of the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and 
French, there were two lesser but noteworthy colonial groups. 
Danish entrepreneurs established themselves at several ports 
on the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, in the vicinity of Cal- 
cutta and inland at Patna between 1695 and 1740. Austrian 
enterprises were set up in the 1720s on the vicinity of Surat in 
modern-day southeastern Gujarat. As with the other non-Brit- 
ish enterprises, the Danish and Austrian enclaves were taken 
over by the British between 1765 and 1815. 

The British Empire in India 

Company Rule, 1 757-1857 

A multiplicity of motives underlay the British penetration 
into India: commerce, security, and a purported moral uplift of 
the people. The "expansive force" of private and company 
trade eventually led to the conquest or annexation of territo- 
ries in which spices, cotton, and opium were produced. British 
investors ventured into the unfamiliar interior landscape in 
search of opportunities that promised substantial profits. Brit- 
ish economic penetration was aided by Indian collaborators, 
such as the bankers and merchants who controlled intricate 
credit networks. British rule in India would have been a frus- 
trated or half-realized dream had not Indian counterparts pro- 
vided connections between rural and urban centers. External 
threats, both real and imagined, such as the Napoleonic Wars 
(1796-1815) and Russian expansion toward Afghanistan (in 
the 1830s), as well as the desire for internal stability, led to the 
annexation of more territory in India. Political analysts in Brit- 
ain wavered initially as they were uncertain of the costs or the 
advantages in undertaking wars in India, but by the 1810s, as 
the territorial aggrandizement eventually paid off, opinion in 
London welcomed the absorption of new areas. Occasionally 
the British Parliament witnessed heated debates against expan- 
sion, but arguments justifying military operations for security 
reasons always won over even the most vehement critics. 

The British soon forgot their own rivalry with the Portu- 
guese and the French and permitted them to stay in their 
coastal enclaves, which they kept even after independence in 
1947 (see National Integration, this ch.). The British, however, 
continued to expand vigorously well into the 1850s. A number 
of aggressive governors-general undertook relentless cam- 
paigns against several Hindu and Muslim rulers. Among them 



30 




Taj Mahal, a monumental white marble garden tomb built at Agra for 
Mumtaz Mahal, the beloved wife of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

were Richard Colley Wellesley (1798-1805), William Pitt 
Amherst (1823-28), George Eden (1836-42), Edward Law 
(1842-44), and James Andrew Brown Ramsay (1848-56; also 
known as the Marquess of Dalhousie) . Despite desperate 
efforts at salvaging their tottering power and keeping the Brit- 
ish at bay, many Hindu and Muslim rulers lost their territories: 
Mysore (1799, but later restored), the Maratha Confederacy 
(1818), and Punjab (1849). The British success in large mea- 
sure was the result not only of their superiority in tactics and 
weapons but also of their ingenious relations with Indian rulers 
through the "subsidiary alliance" system, introduced in the 
early nineteenth century. Many rulers bartered away their real 
responsibilities by agreeing to uphold British paramountcy in 
India, while they retained a fictional sovereignty under the 
rubric of Pax Britannica. Later, Dalhousie espoused the "doc- 



31 



India: A Country Study 

trine of lapse" and annexed outright the estates of deceased 
princes of Satara (1848), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853), Tan- 
jore (1853), Nagpur (1854), and Oudh (1856). 

European perceptions of India, and those of the British 
especially, shifted from unequivocal appreciation to sweeping 
condemnation of India's past achievements and customs. 
Imbued with an ethnocentric sense of superiority, British intel- 
lectuals, including Christian missionaries, spearheaded a move- 
ment that sought to bring Western intellectual and 
technological innovations to Indians. Interpretations of the 
causes of India's cultural and spiritual "backwardness" varied, 
as did the solutions. Many argued that it was Europe's mission 
to civilize India and hold it as a trust until Indians proved 
themselves competent for self-rule. 

The immediate consequence of this sense of superiority was 
to open India to more aggressive missionary activity. The con- 
tributions of three missionaries based in Serampore (a Danish 
enclave in Bengal) — William Carey, Joshua Marshman, and 
William Ward — remained unequaled and have provided inspi- 
ration for future generations of their successors. The mission- 
aries translated the Bible into the vernaculars, taught company 
officials local languages, and, after 1813, gained permission to 
proselytize in the company's territories. Although the actual 
number of converts remained negligible, except in rare 
instances when entire groups embraced Christianity, such as 
the Nayars in the south or the Nagas in the northeast, the mis- 
sionary impact on India through publishing, schools, orphan- 
ages, vocational institutions, dispensaries, and hospitals was 
unmistakable. 

The British Parliament enacted a series of laws, among 
which the Regulating Act of 1773 stood first, to curb the com- 
pany traders' unrestrained commercial activities and to bring 
about some order in territories under company control. Limit- 
ing the company charter to periods of twenty years, subject to 
review upon renewal, the 1773 act gave the British government 
supervisory rights over the Bengal, Bombay, and Madras presi- 
dencies. Bengal was given preeminence over the rest because 
of its enormous commercial vitality and because it was the seat 
of British power in India (at Calcutta), whose governor was ele- 
vated to the new position of governor-general. Warren Hastings 
was the first incumbent (1773-85). The India Act of 1784, 
sometimes described as the "half-loaf system," as it sought to 
mediate between Parliament and the company directors, 



32 



Historical Setting 



enhanced Parliament's control by establishing the Board of 
Control, whose members were selected from the cabinet. The 
Charter Act of 1813 recognized British moral responsibility by 
introducing just and humane laws in India, foreshadowing 
future social legislation, and outlawing a number of traditional 
practices such as sati and thagi (or thugee, robbery coupled 
with ritual murder). 

As governor-general from 1786 to 1793, Charles Cornwallis 
(the Marquis of Cornwallis), professionalized, bureau cratized, 
and Europeanized the company's administration. He also out- 
lawed private trade by company employees, separated the com- 
mercial and administrative functions, and remunerated 
company servants with generous graduated salaries. Because 
revenue collection became the company's most essential 
administrative function, Cornwallis made a compact with Ben- 
gali zamindars, who were perceived as the Indian counterparts 
to the British landed gentry. The Permanent Settlement sys- 
tem, also known as the zamindari system, fixed taxes in perpe- 
tuity in return for ownership of large estates; but the state was 
excluded from agricultural expansion, which came under the 
purview of the zamindars. In Madras and Bombay, however, the 
ryotwari (peasant) settlement system was set in motion, in 
which peasant cultivators had to pay annual taxes directly to 
the government. 

Neither the zamindari nor the ryotwari systems proved effec- 
tive in the long run because India was integrated into an inter- 
national economic and pricing system over which it had no 
control, while increasing numbers of people subsisted on agri- 
culture for lack of other employment. Millions of people 
involved in the heavily taxed Indian textile industry also lost 
their markets, as they were unable to compete successfully with 
cheaper textiles produced in Lancashire's mills from Indian 
raw materials. 

Beginning with the Mayor's Court, established in 1727 for 
civil litigation in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, justice in the 
interior came under the company's jurisdiction. In 1772 an 
elaborate judicial system, known as adalat, established civil and 
criminal jurisdictions along with a corrfplex set of codes or 
rules of procedure and evidence. Both Hindu pandits (see 
Glossary) and Muslim qazis (sharia court judges) were 
recruited to aid the presiding judges in interpreting their cus- 
tomary laws, but in other instances, British common and statu- 
tory laws became applicable. In extraordinary situations where 



33 



India: A Country Study 



none of these systems was applicable., the judges were enjoined 
to adjudicate on the basis of 'justice., equity, and good con- 
science." The legal profession provided numerous opportuni- 
ties for educated and talented Indians who were unable to 
secure positions in the company, and., as a result.. Indian law- 
yers later dominated nationalist politics and reform move- 
ments. 

Education for the most part was left to the charge of Indians 
or to private agents who imparted instruction in the vernacu- 
lars. But in 1813.. the British became convinced of their "duty" 
to awaken the Indians from intellectual slumber bv exposing 
them to British literary traditions., earmarking a paltry sum for 
the cause. Controversy between two groups of Europeans — the 
"Orientalists" and "Anglicists" — over how the monev was to be 
spent prevented them from formulating anv consistent policv 
until 1S35 when William Cavendish Bentinck. the governor- 
general from 1S2S to 1S35. finally broke the impasse bv resolv- 
ing to introduce the English language as the medium of 
instruction. English replaced Persian in public administration 
and education. 

The company's education policies in the 1830s tended to 
reinforce existing lines of socioeconomic division in society 
rather than bringing general liberation from ignorance and 
superstition. Whereas the Hindu English-educated minority 
spearheaded manv social and religious reforms either in direct 
response to government policies or in reaction to them. Mus- 
lims as a group initially failed to do so, a position they endeav- 
ored to reverse. Western-educated Hindu elites sought to rid 
Hinduism of its much criticized social evils: idolatry the caste 
svstem. child marriage, and sati. Religious and social activist 
Ram Mohan Rov (1772-1833). who founded the Brahmo 
Samaj (Society of Brahma) in 1828, displayed a readiness to 
synthesize themes taken from Christianity*. Deism, and Indian 
monism, while other individuals in Bombay and Madras initi- 
ated literary and debatine; societies that grave them a forum for 
open discourse. The exemplary educational attainments and 
skillful use of the press bv these early reformers enhanced the 
possibility of effecting broad reforms without compromising 
societal values or religious practices. 

The 1850s witnessed the introduction of the three "engines 
of social improvement" that heightened the British illusion of 
permanence in India. Thev were the railroads, the telegraph, 
and the uniform postal service, inaugurated during the tenure 



34 



Historical Setting 



of Dalhousie as governor-general. The first railroad lines were 
built in 1850 from Howrah (Haora, across the Hughli River 
from Calcutta) inland to the coalfields at Raniganj, Bihar, a dis- 
tance of 240 kilometers. In 1851 the first electric telegraph line 
was laid in Bengal and soon linked Agra, Bombay, Calcutta, 
Lahore, Varanasi, and other cities. The three different presi- 
dency or regional postal systems merged in 1854 to facilitate 
uniform methods of communication at an all-India level. With 
uniform postal rates for letters and newspapers — one-half anna 
and one anna, respectively (sixteen annas equalled one 
rupee) — communication between the rural and the metropoli- 
tan areas became easier and faster. The increased ease of com- 
munication and the opening of highways and waterways 
accelerated the movement of troops, the transportation of raw 
materials and goods to and from the interior, and the 
exchange of commercial information. 

The railroads did not break down the social or cultural dis- 
tances between various groups but tended to create new cate- 
gories in travel. Separate compartments in the trains were 
reserved exclusively for the ruling class, separating the edu- 
cated and wealthy from ordinary people. Similarly, when the 
Sepoy Rebellion was quelled in 1858, a British official 
exclaimed that "the telegraph saved India." He envisaged, of 
course, that British interests in India would continue indefi- 
nitely. 

The British Raj, 1 858-1 947 

Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-59 

On May 10, 1857, Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army, 
drawn mostly from Muslim units from Bengal, mutinied in 
Meerut, a cantonment eighty kilometers northeast of Delhi. 
The rebels marched to Delhi to offer their services to the 
Mughal emperor, and soon much of north and central India 
was plunged into a year-long insurrection against the British. 

The uprising, which seriously threatened British rule in 
India, has been called many names by historians, including the 
Sepoy Rebellion, the Great Mutiny, and the Revolt of 1857; 
many people in South Asia, however, prefer to call it India's 
first war of independence. Undoubtedly, it was the culmination 
of mounting Indian resentment toward British economic and 
social policies over many decades. Until the rebellion, the Brit- 
ish had succeeded in suppressing numerous riots and "tribal" 



35 



In d ia: A Co u n try Stu dy 



wars or in accommodating them through concessions, but two 
events triggered the violent explosion of wrath in 1857. First, 
was the annexation in 1856 of Oudh, a wealthv princelv state 
that generated huge revenue and represented a vestige of 
Mughal authority. The second was the British blunder in using 
cartridges for the Lee-Enfield rifle that were allegedly greased 
with animal fat. which was offensive to the religious beliefs of 
Muslim and Hindu sepoys. The rebellion soon engulfed much 
of North India, including Oudh and various areas once under 
the control of Maratha princes. Isolated mutinies also occurred 
at military posts in the center of the subcontinent. Initially, the 
rebels, although divided and uncoordinated, gained the upper 
hand, while the unprepared British were terrified, and even 
paralvzed, without replacements for the casualties. The civil 
war inflicted havoc on both Indians and British as each vented 
its fury on the other: each community suffered humiliation 
and triumph in battle as well, although the final outcome was 
victory for the British. The last major sepoy rebels surrendered 
on June 21. 1858, at Gwalior (Madhva Pradesh) , one of the 
principal centers of the revolt. A final battle was fought at Sirwa 
Pass on May 21, 1859, and the defeated rebels fled into Nepal. 

The spontaneous and widespread rebellion later fired the 
imagination of the nationalists who would debate the most 
effective method of protest against British rule. For them, the 
rebellion represented the first Indian attempt at gaining inde- 
pendence. This interpretation, however, is open to serious 
question. 

Post-Rebellion Developments 

The civil war was a major turning point in the history of 
modern India. In May 1858, the British exiled Emperor Baha- 
dur Shah II (r. 1837-57) to Burma, thus formally liquidating 
the Mughal Empire. At the same time, thev abolished the Brit- 
ish East India Company and replaced it with direct rule under 
the British crown. In proclaiming the new direct-rule policy to 
"the Princes. Chiefs, and Peoples of India." Queen Victoria 
(who was given the title Empress of India in 1877) promised 
equal treatment under British law, but Indian mistrust of Brit- 
ish rule had become a legacv of the 1857 rebellion. Many exist- 
ing economic and revenue policies remained virtually 
unchanged in the post-1857 period, but several administrative 
modifications were introduced, beginning with the creation in 
London of a cabinet post, the secretary of state for India. The 



36 



Historical Setting 



governor-general (called viceroy when acting as the direct rep- 
resentative of the British crown), headquartered in Calcutta, 
ran the administration in India, assisted by executive and legis- 
lative councils. Beneath the governor-general were the provin- 
cial governors, who held power over the district officials, who 
formed the lower rungs of the Indian Civil Service. For 
decades the Indian Civil Service was the exclusive preserve of 
the British-born, as were the superior ranks in such other pro- 
fessions as law and medicine. The British administrators were 
imbued with a sense of duty in ruling India and were rewarded 
with good salaries, high status, and opportunities for promo- 
tion. Not until the 1910s did the British reluctantly permit a 
few Indians into their cadre as the number of English-educated 
Indians rose steadily. 

The viceroy announced in 1858 that the government would 
honor former treaties with princely states and renounced the 
"doctrine of lapse," whereby the East India Company had 
annexed territories of rulers who died without male heirs. 
About 40 percent of Indian territory and between 20 and 25 
percent of the population remained under the control of 562 
princes notable for their religious (Islamic, Sikh, Hindu, and 
other) and ethnic diversity. Their propensity for pomp and cer- 
emony became proverbial, while their domains, varying in size 
and wealth, lagged behind sociopolitical transformations that 
took place elsewhere in British-controlled India. 

A more thorough reorganization was effected in the consti- 
tution of army and government finances. Shocked by the 
extent of solidarity among Indian soldiers during the rebellion, 
the government separated the army into the three presidencies 
(see Company Armies, ch. 10). 

British attitudes toward Indians shifted from relative open- 
ness to insularity and xenophobia, even against those with com- 
parable background and achievement as well as loyalty. British 
families and their servants lived in cantonments at a distance 
from Indian settlements. Private clubs where the British gath- 
ered for social interaction became symbols of exclusivity and 
snobbery that refused to disappear decades after the British 
had left India. In 1883 the government of India attempted to 
remove race barriers in criminal jurisdictions by introducing a 
bill empowering Indian judges to adjudicate offenses commit- 
ted by Europeans. Public protests and editorials in the British 
press, however, forced the viceroy, George Robinson, Marquis 
of Ripon (who served from 1880 to 1884), to capitulate and 



37 



India: A Country Study 

modify the bill drastically. The Bengali Hindu intelligentsia 
learned a valuable political lesson from this "white mutiny": the 
effectiveness of well-orchestrated agitation through demonstra- 
tions in the streets and publicity in the media when seeking 
redress for real and imagined grievances. 

The Independence Movement 

Origins of the Congress and the Muslim League 

The decades following the Sepoy Rebellion were a period of 
growing political awareness, manifestation of Indian public 
opinion, and emergence of Indian leadership at national and 
provincial levels. Ominous economic uncertainties created by 
British colonial rule and the limited opportunities that awaited 
the ever-expanding number of Western-educated graduates 
began to dominate the rhetoric of leaders who had begun to 
think of themselves as a "nation," despite fissures along the 
lines of region, religion, language, and caste. Inspired by the 
suggestion made by A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, 
seventy-three Indian delegates met in Bombay in 1885 and 
founded the Indian National Congress (Congress — see Glos- 
sary) . They were mostly members of the upwardly mobile and 
successful Western-educated provincial elites, engaged in pro- 
fessions such as law, teaching, and journalism. They had 
acquired political experience from regional competition in the 
professions and from their aspirations in securing nomination 
to various positions in legislative councils, universities, and spe- 
cial commissions. 

At its inception, the Congress had no well-defined ideology 
and commanded few of the resources essential to a political 
organization. It functioned more as a debating society that met 
annually to express its loyalty to the Raj and passed numerous 
resolutions on less controversial issues such as civil rights or 
opportunities in government, especially the civil service. These 
resolutions were submitted to the viceroy's government and, 
occasionally, to the British Parliament, but the Congress's early 
gains were meager. Despite its claim to represent all India, the 
Congress voiced the interests of urban elites; the number of 
participants from other economic backgrounds remained neg- 
ligible. 

By 1900, although the Congress had emerged as an all-India 
political organization, its achievement was undermined by its 
singular failure to attract Muslims, who had by then begun to 



38 



Historical Setting 



realize their inadequate education and underrepresentation in 
government service. Muslim leaders saw that their community 
had fallen behind the Hindus. Attacks by Hindu reformers 
against religious conversion, cow killing, and the preservation 
of Urdu in Arabic script deepened their fears of minority status 
and denial of their rights if the Congress alone were to repre- 
sent the people of India. For many Muslims, loyalty to the Brit- 
ish crown seemed preferable to cooperation with Congress 
leaders. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98) launched a move- 
ment for Muslim regeneration that culminated in the founding 
in 1875 of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Ali- 
garh, Uttar Pradesh (renamed Aligarh Muslim University in 
1921). Its objective was to educate wealthy students by empha- 
sizing the compatibility of Islam with modern Western knowl- 
edge. The diversity among India's Muslims, however, made it 
impossible to bring about uniform cultural and intellectual 
regeneration. 

Sir George Curzon, the governor-general (1899-1905), 
ordered the partition of Bengal in 1905. He wanted to improve 
administrative efficiency in that huge and populous region, 
where the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia exerted considerable 
influence on local and national politics. The partition created 
two provinces: Eastern Bengal and Assam, with its capital at 
Dhaka (then spelled Dacca), and West Bengal, with its capital 
at Calcutta (which also served as the capital of British India). 
An ill-conceived and hastily implemented action, the partition 
outraged Bengalis. Not only had the government failed to con- 
sult Indian public opinion but the action appeared to reflect 
the British resolve to "divide and rule." Widespread agitation 
ensued in the streets and in the press, and the Congress advo- 
cated boycotting British products under the banner of swadeshi 
(home-made — see Glossary). 

The Congress-led boycott of British goods was so successful 
that it unleashed anti-British forces to an extent unknown since 
the Sepoy Rebellion. A cycle of violence, terrorism, and repres- 
sion ensued in some parts of the country. The British tried to 
mitigate the situation by announcing a series of constitutional 
reforms in 1909 and by appointing a few moderates to the 
imperial and provincial councils. In 1906 a Muslim deputation 
met with the viceroy, Gilbert John Elliot (1905-10), seeking 
concessions from the impending constitutional reforms, 
including special considerations in government service and 
electorates. The All-India Muslim League (Muslim League — 



39 



India: A Country Study 

see Glossary) was founded the same year to promote loyalty to 
the British and to advance Muslim political rights, which the 
British recognized bv increasing the number of elective offices 
reserved for Muslims in the India Councils Act of 1909. The 
Muslim League insisted on its separateness from the Hindu- 
dominated Congress, as the voice of a "nation within a nation." 

In what the British saw as an additional goodwill gesture, in 
1911 King-Emperor George A' (r 1910-36) visited India for a 
durbar ( a traditional court held for subjects to express fealty to 
their ruler), during which he announced the reversal of the 
partition of Bengal and the transfer of the capital from Cal- 
cutta to a newly planned citv to be built immediately south of 
Delhi, which became New Delhi. 

War, Reforms, and Agitation 

World "War I began with an unprecedented outpouring of 
lovaltv and goodwill toward the British, contrary to initial Brit- 
ish fears of an Indian revolt. India contributed generously to 
the British war effort, by providing men and resources. About 
1.3 million Indian soldiers and laborers served in Europe. 
Africa, and the Middle East, while both the Indian government 
and the princes sent large supplies of food, money and ammu- 
nition. But disillusionment set in earlv High casualty rates,, 
soaring inflation compounded bv he aw taxation, a widespread 
influenza epidemic, and the disruption of trade during the war 
escalated human suffering in India. The prewar nationalist 
movement revived as moderate and extremist groups within 
the Congress submerged their differences in order to stand as 
a unified front. The Congress even succeeded in forging a tem- 
porarv alliance with the Muslim League — the Lucknow Pact, or 
Congress-League Scheme of Reforms — in 1916. over the issues 
of devolution of political power and the future of Islam in the 
Middle East. 

The British themselves adopted a "carrot and stick" 
approach in recognition of India's support during the war and 
in response to renewed nationalist demands. In August 1917. 
Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India, made the his- 
toric announcement in Parliament that the British policy for 
India was "increasing association of Indians in every branch of 
the administration and the gradual development of self-gov- 
erning institutions with a view to the progressive realization of 
responsible government in India as an integral part of the Brit- 
ish Empire. The means of achieving the proposed measure 



40 



Historical Setting 



were later enshrined in the Government of India Act of 1919, 
which introduced the principle of a dual mode of administra- 
tion, or dyarchy, in which both elected Indian legislators and 
appointed British officials shared power. The act also 
expanded the central and provincial legislatures and widened 
the franchise considerably. Dyarchy set in motion certain real 
changes at the provincial level: a number of noncontroversial 
or "transferred" portfolios — such as agriculture, local govern- 
ment, health, education, and public works — were handed over 
to Indians, while more sensitive matters such as finance, taxa- 
tion, and maintaining law and order were retained by the pro- 
vincial British administrators. 

The positive impact of reform was seriously undermined in 
1919 by the Rowlatt Acts, named after the recommendations 
made the previous year to the Imperial Legislative Council by 
the Rowlatt Commission, which had been appointed to investi- 
gate "seditious conspiracy." The Rowlatt Acts, also known as the 
Black Acts, vested the viceroy's government with extraordinary 
powers to quell sedition by silencing the press, detaining politi- 
cal activists without trial, and arresting any suspected individu- 
als without a warrant. No sooner had the acts come into force 
in March 1919 — despite opposition by Indian members on the 
Imperial Legislative Council — than a nationwide cessation of 
work {hartal) was called by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 
(1869-1948). Others took up his call, marking the beginning 
of widespread — although not nationwide — popular discontent. 
The agitation unleashed by the acts culminated on April 13, 
1919, in Amritsar, Punjab. The British military commander, 
Brigadier Reginald E.H. Dyer, ordered his soldiers to fire at 
point-blank range into an unarmed and unsuspecting crowd of 
some 10,000 men, women, and children. They had assembled 
at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled garden, to celebrate a Hindu festi- 
val without prior knowledge of the imposition of martial law. A 
total of 1,650 rounds were fired, killing 379 persons and 
wounding 1,137 in the episode, which dispelled wartime hopes 
and goodwill in a frenzy of postwar reaction. 

Mahatma Gandhi 

That India opted for an entirely original path to solving this 
crisis and obtaining swaraj (independence) was due largely to 
Gandhi, commonly known as "Mahatma" (or Great Soul) or, as 
he himself preferred, "Gandhiji" (an honorific term for Gan- 
dhi). A native of Gujarat who had been educated in Britain, he 



41 



India: A Country Study 

was an obscure and unsuccessful provincial lawyer. Gandhi had 
accepted an invitation in 1893 to represent indentured Indian 
laborers in South Africa, where he stayed on for more than 
twenty years, emerging ultimately as the voice and conscience 
of thousands who had been subjected to blatant racial discrimi- 
nation. He returned to India in 1915, virtually a stranger to 
public life but "fired with a religious vision of a new India, 
whose swaraj . . . would [be] a moral reformation of a whole 
people which would either convert the British also or render 
their Raj impossible by Indian withdrawal of support for it and 
its modern values," according to historian Judith M. Brown. 

Gandhi's ideas and strategies of nonviolent civil disobedi- 
ence (satyagraha — see Glossary), first applied during his South 
Africa days, initially appeared impractical to many educated 
Indians. In Gandhi's own words, "Civil disobedience is civil 
breach of unmoral statutory enactments," but as he viewed it, it 
had to be carried out nonviolently by withdrawing cooperation 
with the corrupt state. Observers realized Gandhi's political 
potential when he used the satyagraha during the anti-Rowlatt 
Acts protests in Punjab. In 1920, under Gandhi's leadership, 
the Congress was reorganized and given a new constitution, 
whose goal was swaraj. Membership in the party was opened to 
anyone prepared to pay a token fee, and a hierarchy of com- 
mittees — from district, to province, to all-India — was estab- 
lished and made responsible for discipline and control over a 
hitherto amorphous and diffuse movement. During his first 
nationwide satyagraha, Gandhi urged the people to boycott 
British education institutions, law courts, and products (in 
favor of swadeshi); to resign from government employment; to 
refuse to pay taxes; and to forsake British titles and honors. 
The party was transformed from an elite organization to one of 
mass national appeal. 

Although Gandhi's first nationwide satyagraha was too late 
to influence the framing of the new Government of India Act 
of 1919, the magnitude of disorder resulting from the move- 
ment was unparalleled and presented a new challenge to for- 
eign rule. Gandhi was forced to call off the campaign in 1922 
because of atrocities committed against police. However, the 
abortive campaign marked a milestone in India's political 
development. For his efforts, Gandhi was imprisoned until 
1924. On his release from prison, he set up an ashram (a rural 
commune), established a newspaper, and inaugurated a series 
of reforms aimed at the socially disadvantaged within Hindu 



42 



i T* 




Mahatma Gandhi spinning thread, 1925 
Courtesy Biographic Collection, Library of Congress 



society, the rural poor, and the Untouchables (see Changes in 
the Caste System, ch. 5). His popularity soared in Indian poli- 
tics as he reached the hearts and minds of ordinary people, 
winning support for his causes as no one else had ever done 
before. By his personal and eclectic piety, his asceticism, his 
vegetarianism, his espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity, and his 
firm belief in ahimsa, Gandhi appealed to the loftier Hindu 
ideals. For Gandhi, moral regeneration, social progress, and 
national freedom were inseparable. 

Emerging leaders within the Congress — Jawaharlal Nehru, 
Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad, C. Rajagopalachari, Mau- 
lana Abdul Kalam Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose, and Jaya- 
prakash (J. P.) Narayan — accepted Gandhi's leadership in artic- 
ulating nationalist aspirations but disagreed on strategies for 
wresting more concessions from the British. The Indian politi- 
cal spectrum was further broadened in the mid-1920s by the 



43 



India: A Country Study 



emergence of both moderate and militant parties, such as the 
Swaraj Party (sometimes referred to as the Swarajist Party), the 
Mahasabha Party (literally, great council; an orthodox Hindu 
communal party), the Unionist Party, the Communist Party of 
India, and the Socialist Independence for India League. 
Regional political organizations also continued to represent 
the interests of non-Brahmans in Madras, Mahars in Maharash- 
tra, and Sikhs in Punjab. 

The Congress, however, kept itself aloof from competing in 
elections. As voices inside and outside the Congress became 
more strident, the British appointed a commission in 1927, 
under Sir John Simon, to recommend further measures in the 
constitutional devolution of power. The British failure to 
appoint an Indian member to the commission outraged the 
Congress and others, and, as a result, they boycotted it 
throughout India, carrying placards inscribed "Simon, Go 
Back." In 1929 the Congress responded by drafting its own con- 
stitution under the guidance of Motilal Nehru (Jawaharlal's 
father) demanding full independence (puma swaraj) by 1930; 
the Congress went so far as to observe January 26, 1930, as the 
first anniversary of the first year of independence. 

Gandhi reemerged from his long seclusion by undertaking 
his most inspired campaign, a march of about 400 kilometers 
from his commune in Ahmadabad to Dandi, on the coast of 
Gujarat between March 12 and April 6, 1930. At Dandi, in pro- 
test against extortionate British taxes on salt, he and thousands 
of followers illegally but symbolically made their own salt from 
sea water. Their defiance reflected India's determination to be 
free, despite the imprisonment of thousands of protesters. For 
the next five years, the Congress and government were locked 
in conflict and negotiations until what became the Govern- 
ment of India Act of 1935 could be hammered out. But by 
then, the rift between the Congress and the Muslim League 
had become unbridgeable as each pointed the finger at the 
other acrimoniously. The Muslim League disputed the claim by 
the Congress to represent all people of India, while the Con- 
gress disputed the Muslim League's claim to voice the aspira- 
tions of all Muslims. 

The 1935 act, the voluminous and final constitutional effort 
at governing British India, articulated three major goals: estab- 
lishing a loose federal structure, achieving provincial auton- 
omy, and safeguarding minority interests through separate 
electorates. The federal provisions, intended to unite princely 



44 



Historical Setting 



states and British India at the center, were not implemented 
because of ambiguities in safeguarding the existing privileges 
of princes. In February 1937, however, provincial autonomy 
became a reality when elections were held; the Congress 
emerged as the dominant party with a clear majority in five 
provinces and held an upper hand in two, while the Muslim 
League performed poorly. 

Political Impasse and Independence 

The Congress neither acknowledged the Muslim League's 
performance, albeit poor, in the elections nor deigned to form 
a coalition government with the League, a situation that led to 
the collapse of negotiations and mutual trust between the lead- 
ers. Mohammad Alijinnah, a Western-educated Muslim lawyer, 
took over the presidency of the moribund Muslim League and 
galvanized it into a national force under the battle cry of "Islam 
in danger." Jinnah doubted the motives of Gandhi and Nehru 
and accused them of practicing Hindu chauvinism. He relent- 
lessly attacked the Congress-led ministries, accusing them of 
casteism, corruption, and nepotism. Skillfully, he succeeded in 
unifying various regional Islamic organizations and factions in 
Punjab and Bengal under the umbrella of the Muslim League. 

Electoral gains by the Congress in 1937 were rendered 
ephemeral as its leaders ordered provincial ministries to resign 
in November 1939, when the viceroy (Victor Alexander John 
Hope, Marquis of Linlithgow — 1936-43) declared India's 
entrance into World War II without consulting Indian leaders. 
Jinnah and the Muslim League welcomed the Congress with- 
drawal from government as a timely opportunity and observed 
a day of thanksgiving on December 22, 1939. Jinnah persuaded 
the participants at the annual Muslim League session in 
Lahore in 1940 to adopt what later came to be known as the 
Pakistan Resolution, demanding the division of India into two 
separate sovereign states, one Muslim, the other Hindu. 
Although the idea of Pakistan had been introduced as early as 
1930 at Allahabad, very few had responded to it. However, the 
volatile political climate, the personal hostilities between the 
leaders, and the opportunism of Jinnah transformed the idea 
of Pakistan into a popular demand. 

Between 1940 and 1942, the Congress launched two abortive 
agitations against the British, and 60,000 Congress members 
were arrested, including Gandhi and Nehru. Unlike the unco- 
operative and belligerent Congress, the Muslim League sup- 



45 



India: A Country Study 

ported the British during World War II (see The Indian 
Military under the British Raj, ch. 10). Belated but perhaps sin- 
cere British attempts to accommodate the demands of the two 
rival parties, while preserving the unitary state in India, seemed 
unacceptable to both as they alternately rejected whatever pro- 
posal was put forward during the war years. As a result, a three- 
way impasse settled in: the Congress and the Muslim League 
doubted British motives in handing over power to Indians, 
while the British struggled to retain some hold on India while 
offering to give greater autonomy. 

The Congress wasted precious time denouncing the British 
rather than allaying Muslim fears during the highly charged 
election campaign of 1946. Even the more mature Congress 
leaders, especially Gandhi and Nehru, failed to see how genu- 
inely afraid the Muslims were and how exhausted and weak the 
British had become in the aftermath of the war. When it 
appeared that the Congress had no desire to share power with 
the Muslim League at the center, Jinnah declared August 16, 
1946, Direct Action Day, which brought communal rioting and 
massacre in many places in the north. Partition seemed prefer- 
able to civil war. On June 3, 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, 
the viceroy (1947) and governor-general (1947-48), 
announced plans for partition of the British Indian Empire 
into the nations of India and Pakistan, which itself was divided 
into east and west wings on either side of India (see fig. 4). At 
midnight, on August 15, 1947, India strode to freedom amidst 
ecstatic shouting of "Jai Hind" (roughly, Long Live India), 
when Nehru delivered a memorable and moving speech on 
India's "tryst with destiny." 

Independent India 

National Integration 

The euphoria of independence was short-lived as partition 
brought disastrous consequences for India in the wake of com- 
munal conflict. Partition unleashed untold misery and loss of 
lives and property as millions of Hindu and Muslim refugees 
fled either Pakistan or India. Both nations were also caught up 
in a number of conflicts involving the allocation of assets, 
demarcation of boundaries, equitable sharing of water 
resources, and control over Kashmir. At the same time, Indian 
leaders were faced with the stupendous task of national integra- 
tion and economic development. 



46 



Historical Setting 



When the British relinquished their claims to paramountcy, 
the 562 independent princely states were given the option to 
join either of the two nations. A few princely states readily 
joined Pakistan, but the rest — except Hyderabad (the largest of 
the princely states with 132,000 square kilometers and a popu- 
lation of more than 14 million), Jammu and Kashmir (with 3 
million inhabitants), andjunagadh (with a population of 
545,000) — merged with India. India successfully annexed 
Hyderabad andjunagadh after "police actions" and promises 
of privileges to the rulers. The Hindu maharajah of predomi- 
nantly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir remained uncommitted 
until armed tribesmen and regular troops from Pakistan infil- 
trated his domain, inducing him to sign the Instrument of 
Accession to India on October 27, 1947. Pakistan refused to 
accept the legality of the accession, and, as a result, war broke 
out (see The Experience of Wars, ch. 10). Kashmir remains a 
source of friction between the neighbors (see South Asia, ch. 
9). The assassination of Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, 
in New Delhi, by a Hindu extremist opposed to Gandhi's open- 
ness to Muslims ended the tenuous celebration of indepen- 
dence and deepened the hatred and mutual suspicion in 
Hindu-Muslim relations. 

Economic backwardness was one of the serious challenges 
that India faced at independence. Under three successive five- 
year plans, inaugurated between 1951 and 1964 under Nehru's 
leadership, India produced increasing amounts of food. 
Although food production did not allow self-sufficiency until 
fiscal year (FY — see Glossary) 1984, India has emerged as the 
nation with the seventh largest gross national product (GNP — 
see Glossary) in the world (see Industry, ch. 6; Production, ch. 
7). 

Linguistic regionalism eventually reached a crisis stage and 
undermined the Congress' attempts at nation building. 
Whereas in the early 1920s, the Congress had deemed that the 
use of regional vernaculars in education and administration 
would facilitate the governance of the country, partition made 
the leaders, especially Nehru, realize how quickly such provin- 
cial or subnational interests would dismantle India's fragile 
unity (see Diversity, Use, and Policy, ch. 4). However, in the 
face of widespread agitation for linguistic separation of states, 
beginning with the Telangana Movement in 1953, in 1956 
Nehru reluctantly accepted the recommendations of the States 
Reorganisation Commission, and the number of states grew by 



49 



•r <xt? 

/^JAMMU AND KASHMIR /' 

\ Peshawar f _ „ - 

_ ^ # ^ • Snnagar ^ , 

i \ 



A 



\ 9 QueUa 



Lahore y • 

PUNJAB CjN < v 



-1 



International boundary, demarcated 
International boundary, undemarcated 
Province, princely state, or state 
agency boundary 
Viceregal capital 
Populated place 
Princely state 

French or Portuguese colony 



150 



300 Kilometers 



-fc« , U NCv ! ...... / 



• r j 

\^Jdelh. 




Source: Based on information from Joseph E. Schwanzberg, ed., A Historical Atlas of South Asia, New York, 1992, 66. 

Figure 4. British Indian Empire, 1947 



India: A Country Study 



reorganization along linguistic lines. The states became the 
loci for democratization of political processes at district levels, 
for expression of regional culture and popular demands 
against a national culture and unity for economic develop- 
ment at strategic localities in the rural areas, and for prolifera- 
tion of opposition parties that ended the possibility of a pan- 
Indian two-party system (see Political Parties, ch. 8). 

Nehru's Legacy 

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964), India's first prime minister, 
was the chief architect of domestic and foreign policies 
between 1947 and 1964. Born into a wealthv Kashmiri Brah- 
man familv and educated at Oxford, Xehru embodied a syn- 
thesis of ideals: politicallv an ardent nationalist, ideologically a 
pragmatic socialist, and secular in religious outlook, Xehru 
possessed a rare combination of intellect, breadth of vision, 
and personal charisma that attracted support throughout 
India. Nehru's appreciation for parliamentarv democracv cou- 
pled with concerns for the poor and underprivileged enabled 
him to formulate policies that often reflected his socialist lean- 
ings. Both as prime minister and as Congress president, Xehru 
pushed through the Indian Parliament, dominated by mem- 
bers of his own partv, a series of legal reforms intended to 
emancipate Hindu women and bring equalitv. These reforms 
included raising the minimum marriageable a^e from twelve to 
fifteen, empowering women to divorce their husbands and 
inherit property and declaring illegal the ruinous dowrv sys- 
tem (see Life Passages, ch. 5). 

The threat of escalating violence and the potential for "red 
revolution" across the countrv seemed daunting in the face of 
the countrv's growing population, unemplovment, and eco- 
nomic inequalitv Xehru induced Parliament to pass a number 
of laws abolishing absentee landlordism and conferring titles 
to land on the actual cultivators who could document their 
right to occupancv. Under his direction, the central Planning 
Commission allocated resources to heaw industries, such as 
steel plants and hvdroelectric projects, and to revitalizing cot- 
tage industries. Whether producing sophisticated defense 
materiel or manufacturing evervdav consumer goods, indus- 
trial complexes emerged across the countrv, accompanied by 
the expansion of scientific research and teaching at universi- 
ties, institutes of technologv, and research centers (see Educa- 
tion, ch. 2: Science and Technologv ch. 6). 



50 



Historical Setting 



Nehru demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm for India's 
moral leadership, especially among the newly independent 
Asian and African nations, in a world polarized by Cold War 
ideology and threatened by nuclear weapons. His guiding prin- 
ciples were nationalism, anucolonialism, internationalism, and 
nonalignment. He attained international prestige during his 
first decade in office, but after the Soviet invasion of Hungary 
in 1956 — when New Delhi tilted toward Moscow — criticisms 
grew against his inconsistency in condemning Western but not 
communist aggression. In dealing with Pakistan, Nehru failed 
to formulate a consistent policy and was critical of the improv- 
ing ties between Pakistan and the United States; mutual hostil- 
ity and suspicion persisted as a result (see United States, ch. 9). 
Despite attempts at improving relations with China, based on 
his much-publicized five principles (Panch Shila — see Glos- 
sary) — territorial integrity and sovereignty, nonaggression, 
noninterference, equality and cooperation, and peaceful coex- 
istence — war with China erupted in 1962. The war was a rude 
awakening for Nehru, as India proved ill-equipped and unpre- 
pared to defend its northern borders. At the conclusion of the 
conflict, the Chinese forces were partially withdrawn and an 
unofficial demilitarized zone was established, but India's pres- 
tige and self-esteem had suffered. Physically debilitated and 
mentally exhausted, Nehru suffered a stroke and died in office 
in May 1964. His legacy of a democratic, federal, and secular 
India continues to survive in spite of attempts by later leaders 
to establish either an autocratic or a theocratic state. 

The Rise of Indira Gandhi 

Nehru's long tenure in office gave continuity and cohesion 
to India's domestic and foreign policies, but as his health dete- 
riorated, concerns over who might inherit his mantle or what 
might befall India after he left office frequently surfaced in 
political circles. After his death, the Congress Caucus, also 
known as the Syndicate, chose Lai Bahadur Shastri as prime 
minister in June 1964. A mild-mannered person, Shastri 
adhered to Gandhian principles of simplicity of life and dedica- 
tion to the service of the country. His short period of leader- 
ship was beset with three major crises: widespread food 
shortages, violent anti-Hindi demonstrations in the state of 
Madras (as Tamil Nadu was then called) that were quelled by 
the army, and the second war with Pakistan over Kashmir. Shas- 
tri's premiership was cut short when he died of a heart attack 



51 



India: A Country Study 

on January 11, 1966, the day after having signed the Soviet-bro- 
kered Tashkent Declaration. The agreement required both 
sides to withdraw all armed personnel by February 26, 1966, to 
the positions they had held prior to August 5, 1965, and to 
observe the cease-fire line. 

Indira Gandhi held a cabinet portfolio as minister of infor- 
mation and broadcasting in Shastri's government. She was the 
only child of Nehru, who was also her mentor in the nationalist 
movement. The Syndicate selected her as prime minister when 
Shastri died in 1966 even though her eligibility was challenged 
by Morarji Desai, a veteran nationalist and long-time aspirant 
to that office. The Congress "bosses" were apparently looking 
for a leading figure acceptable to the masses, who could com- 
mand general support during the next general election but 
who would also acquiesce to their guidance. Hardly had Indira 
Gandhi begun in office than she encountered a series of prob- 
lems that defied easy solutions: Mizo tribal uprisings in the 
northeast; famine, labor unrest, and misery among the poor in 
the wake of rupee devaluation; and agitation in Punjab for lin- 
guistic and religious separatism. 

In the fourth general election in February 1967, the Con- 
gress majority was greatly reduced when it secured only 54 per- 
cent of the parliamentary seats, and non-Congress ministries 
were established in Bihar, Kerala, Orissa, Madras, Punjab, and 
West Bengal the next month. A Congress-led coalition govern- 
ment collapsed in Uttar Pradesh, while in April Rajasthan was 
brought under President's Rule — direct central government 
rule (see The Executive, ch. 8). Seeking to eradicate poverty, 
Mrs. Gandhi pursued a vigorous policy in 1969 of land reform 
and placed a ceiling on personal income, private property, and 
corporate profits. She also nationalized the major banks, a bold 
step amidst a growing rift between herself and the party elders. 
The Congress expelled her for "indiscipline" on November 12, 
1969, an action that split the party into two factions: the Con- 
gress (O) — for Organisation — under Desai, and the Congress 
(R) — for Requisition — under Gandhi. She continued as prime 
minister with support from communists, Sikhs, and regional 
parties. 

Gandhi campaigned fiercely on the platform "eliminate pov- 
erty" (garibi hatao) during the fifth general election in March 
1971, and the Congress (R) gained a large majority in Parlia- 
ment against her former party leaders whose slogan was "elimi- 
nate Indira" (Indira hatao). India's decisive victory over 



52 



The site ofMahatma Gandhi's 
last steps and assassination on 
January 30, 1948, New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 




Pakistan in the third war over Kashmir in December 1971, and 
Gandhi's insistence that the 10 million refugees from Ban- 
gladesh be sent back to their country generated a national 
surge in her popularity, later confirmed by her party's gains in 
state elections in 1972. She had firmly established herself at the 
pinnacle of power, overcoming challenges from the Congress 
(O), the Supreme Court, and the state chief ministers in the 
early 1970s. The more solidified her monopoly of power 
became, the more egregious was her intolerance of criticisms, 
even when they were deserved. As head of her party and the 
government, Gandhi nominated and removed the chief minis- 
ters at will and frequently reshuffled the portfolios of her own 
cabinet members. Ignoring their obligations to their constitu- 
encies, party members competed with each other in parading 
their loyalty to Gandhi, whose personal approval alone seemed 
crucial to their survival. In August 1971, Gandhi signed the 
twenty-year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with 
the Soviet Union because ties with the United States, which 
had improved in Nehru's later years, had eroded (see Russia, 
ch. 9). 

Neither Gandhi's consolidation of power, nor her imperious 
style of administration, nor even her rhetoric of radical reforms 
was enough to meet the deepening economic crisis spawned by 
the enormous cost of the 1971 war. A huge additional outlay 



53 



India: A Country Study 

was needed to manage the refugees, the crop failures in 1972 
and 1973, the skyrocketing world oil prices in 1973-74, and the 
overall drop in industrial output despite a surplus of scientifi- 
cally and technically trained personnel. No immediate sign of 
economic recovery or equity was visible despite a loan obtained 
from the International Monetary Fund (IMF — see Glossary) in 
1974. Both Gandhi's office and character came under severe 
tests, beginning with railroad employee strikes, national civil 
disobedience advocated by J. P. Narayan, defeat of her party in 
Gujarat by a coalition of parties calling itself the Janata Morcha 
(People's Front), an all-party, no-confidence motion in Parlia- 
ment, and, finally, a writ issued by the Allahabad High Court 
invalidating her 1971 election and making her ineligible to 
occupy her seat for six years. 

What had once seemed a remote possibility took place on 
June 25, 1975: the president declared an Emergency and the 
government suspended civil rights. Because the nation's presi- 
dent, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1974-77), and Gandhi's own 
party members in Parliament were amenable to her personal 
influence, Gandhi had little trouble in pushing through 
amendments to the constitution that exonerated her from any 
culpability, declaring President's Rule in Gujarat and Tamil 
Nadu where anti-Indira parties ruled, and jailing thousands of 
her opponents. In her need to trust and confide in someone 
during this extremely trying period, she turned to her younger 
son, Sanjay, who became an enthusiastic advocate of the Emer- 
gency. Under his watchful eyes, forced sterilization as a means 
of birth control was imposed on the poor, increased numbers 
of urban squatters and slum dwellers in Delhi were evicted in 
the name of beautification projects, and disgruntled workers 
were either disciplined or their wages frozen. The Reign of Ter- 
ror, as some called it, continued until January 18, 1977, when 
Gandhi suddenly relaxed the Emergency, announced the next 
general election in March, and released her opponents from 
prison. 

With elections only two months away, both J. P. Narayan and 
Morarji Desai reactivated the multiparty front, which cam- 
paigned as the Janata Party and rode anti-Emergency senti- 
ment to secure a clear majority in the Lok Sabha (House of the 
People), the lower house of Parliament (see The Legislature, 
ch. 8). Desai, a conservative Brahman, became India's fourth 
prime minister (1977-79), but his government, from its incep- 
tion, became notorious for its factionalism and furious internal 



54 



Historical Setting 



competition. As it promised, the Janata government restored 
freedom and democracy, but its inability to effect sound 
reforms or ameliorate poverty left people disillusioned. Desai 
lost the support of Janata's left-wing parties by the early sum- 
mer of 1979, and several secular and liberal politicians aban- 
doned him altogether, leaving him without a parliamentary 
majority. A no-confidence motion was about to be introduced 
in Parliament in July 1979, but he resigned his office; Desai's 
government was replaced by a coalition led by Chaudhury Cha- 
ran Singh (prime minister in 1979-80). Although Singh's life- 
long ambition had been to become prime minister, his age and 
inefficiency were used against him, and his attempts at govern- 
ing India proved futile; new elections were announced in Janu- 
ary 1980. 

Gandhi and her party, renamed Congress (I) — I for Indira — 
campaigned on the slogan "Elect a Government That Works!" 
and regained power. Sanjay Gandhi was elected to the Lok 
Sabha. Unlike during the Emergency, when India registered 
significant economic and industrial progress, Gandhi's return 
to power was hindered by a series of woes and tragedies, begin- 
ning with Sanjay's death in June 1980 while attempting to per- 
form stunts in his private airplane. Secessionist forces in 
Punjab and in the northeast and the Soviet occupation of 
Afghanistan in December 1979 consumed her energy. She 
began to involve the armed forces in resolving violent domestic 
conflicts between 1980 and 1984. In May 1984, Sikh extremists 
occupied the Golden Temple in Amritsar, converting it into a 
haven for terrorists. Gandhi responded in early June when she 
launched Operation Bluestar, which killed and wounded hun- 
dreds of soldiers, insurgents, and civilians (see Insurgent Move- 
ments and External Subversion, ch. 10). Guarding against 
further challenges to her power, she removed the chief minis- 
ters of Jammu and Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh just months 
before her assassination by her Sikh bodyguards on October 
31, 1984. The news of Indira Gandhi's assassination plunged 
New Delhi and other parts of India into anti-Sikh riots for three 
days; several thousand Sikhs were killed. 

Rajiv Gandhi 

When Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's eldest son, reluctantly con- 
sented to run for his brother's vacant Lok Sabha seat in 1980, 
and when he later took over the leadership of the Congress 
youth wing, becoming prime minister was the last thing on his 



55 



India: A Country Study 



mind; equally, his mother had her own misgivings about 
whether Rajiv would bravely "take the brutalities and the ruth- 
lessness of politics." Yet on the day Indira was assassinated, Rajiv 
was sworn in as prime minister at the age of forty. He brought 
into politics energy, enthusiasm, and vision — qualities badly 
needed to lead the divided country. Moreover, his looks, per- 
sonal charm, and reputation as "Mr. Clean" were assets that 
won him many friends in India and abroad, especially in the 
United States. Rajiv also had a clear mandate to rule the coun- 
try with an overwhelming majority in Parliament. 

Rajiv seemed to have understood the magnitude of the most 
critical and urgent problems that faced the nation when he 
assumed office. As Paul H. Kreisberg, a former United States 
foreign service officer, put it, Rajiv was faced with an unenvi- 
able four-pronged challenge: resolving political and religious 
violence in Punjab and the northeast; reforming the demoral- 
ized Congress (I), which was often identified with the interests 
of the upper and upper-middle classes; reenergizing the sag- 
ging economy in terms of productivity and budget control; and 
reducing tensions with neighbors, especially Pakistan and Sri 
Lanka. As Rajiv tackled these issues with singular determina- 
tion, there was optimism and hope about the future of India. 
Between 1985 and 1987, temporary calm was restored by 
accommodating demands for regional control in the northeast 
and by granting more concessions to Punjab. Although Rajiv 
acknowledged the gradual attrition of the Congress, he was 
unwilling to relinquish control of the leadership, tolerate 
"cliques," or conduct new elections for offices at the state and 
district levels. 

Economic reforms and incentives to private investors were 
introduced by easing government tax rates and licensing 
requirements, but officials manipulated the rules and fre- 
quently accepted bribes. These innovative measures also came 
under attack from business leaders, who for many years had 
controlled both markets and prices with little regard for qual- 
ity When the Ministry of Finance began its own investigation of 
tax and foreign-exchange evasion amounting to millions of dol- 
lars, many of India's leading families, including Rajiv's political 
allies, were found culpable. Despite these hindrances, Rajiv's 
fascination with electronics and telecommunications resulted 
in revamping the antiquated telephone systems to meet public 
demands. Collaboration with the United States and several 



56 



Historical Setting 



European governments and corporations brought more invest- 
ment in research in electronics and computer software. 

India's perennial, see-sawing tensions with Pakistan, whose 
potential nuclear-weapons capacity escalated concerns in the 
region, were ameliorated when the South Asian Association for 
Regional Cooperation (SAARC — see Glossary) was inaugu- 
rated in December 1985. Both nations signed an agreement in 
1986 promising that neither would launch a first strike at the 
other's nuclear facilities. However, sporadic conflicts persist 
along the cease-fire line in Kashmir (see South Asia, ch. 9). 

Relations with Sri Lanka degenerated because of unresolved 
Sinhalese-Tamil controversies and continued guerrilla warfare 
by Tamil militants, under the leadership of the Liberation 
Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who had bases in Tamil Nadu. Begin- 
ning in 1987, India's attempt to disarm and subdue the Tigers 
through intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force 
proved disastrous as thousands of Indian soldiers and Tamil 
militants were killed or wounded (see Peacekeeping Opera- 
tions, ch. 10). 

Rajiv Gandhi's performance in the middle of his term in 
office was best summed up, as Kreisberg put it, as "good inten- 
tions, some progress, frequently weak implementation, and 
poor politics." Two major scandals, the "Spy" and the "Bofors" 
affairs, tarnished his reputation. In January 1985, Gandhi con- 
firmed in Parliament the involvement of top government offi- 
cials, their assistants, and businessmen in "a wide-ranging 
espionage network." The ring reportedly infiltrated the prime 
minister's office as early as 1982 when Indira was in power and 
sold defense and economic intelligence to foreign diplomats at 
the embassies of France, Poland and other East European 
countries, and the Soviet Union. Although more than twenty- 
four arrests were made and the diplomats involved were 
expelled, the Spy scandal remained a lingering embarrassment 
to Rajiv's administration. 

In 1986 India purchased US$1.3 billion worth of artillery 
pieces from the Swedish manufacturer A.B. Bofors, and 
months later a Swedish radio report remarked that Bofors had 
won the "biggest" export order by bribing Indian politicians 
and defense personnel. The revelation caught the nation's 
attention immediately because of the allegations that somehow 
Rajiv Gandhi and his friends were connected with the deal. 
When Vishwanath Pratap (V.P.) Singh, as minister of defence, 
investigated the alleged kickbacks, he was forced to resign, and 



57 



India: A Country Study 

he became Rajiv's Janata political rival. Despite relentless 
attacks and criticisms in the media as well as protests and resig- 
nations from cabinet members, Rajiv adamantly denied any 
role in the affair. But when he called parliamentary elections in 
November 1989, two months ahead of schedule, the opposition 
alliance, the National Front, vigorously campaigned on "remov- 
ing corruption and restoring the dignity of national institu- 
tions," as did another opposition party, Janata Dal. Rajiv and his 
party won more seats in the election than any other party, but, 
being unable to form a government with a clear majority or a 
mandate, he resigned on November 29. Rajiv Gandhi was assas- 
sinated by Sri Lankan terrorists on May 21, 1991, near Madras. 
The Gandhi era, as future events would prove, was over, at least 
for the near term (see Political Parties, ch. 8). 

* * * 

The literature on Indian history in the English language 
alone is exhaustive as demonstrated in South Asian Civilizations: 
A Bibliographic Synthesis by Maureen L.P. Patterson. The most 
commonly used text is the two-volume A History of India by 
Romila Thapar (volume 1) and Percival Spear (volume 2). 
Monographs, such as Stanley Wolpert's A New History of India 
and Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund's A History of 
India, cover major epochs. 

Critical works by Gregory L. Possehl ( The Harappan Civiliza- 
tion), A.L. Basham (The Wonder That Was India), Kallidaikurchi 
Aiyah Nilakanta Sastri (History of South India from Prehistoric 
Times to theFallofVijayanagar), and Burton Stein (Peasant, State, 
and Society in Medieval South India) offer valuable insights as well 
as theoretical foundations for understanding India prior to 
Mughal rule. Essays in The Cambridge Economic History of India, 
edited by Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, provide a full 
account of life in India from the twelfth to the eighteenth cen- 
turies. The Mughal Empire, by John Richards, a volume in The 
New Cambridge History of India, reflects the current discussion 
on the dynamic nature and quality of the rulers; Irfan Habib's 
An Atlas of Mughal Empire and The Agrarian System of Mughal 
India, 1556-1707 focus on the administrative and economic 
aspects of the empire. Bamber Gascoigne's The Great Mughals 
has photographs along with texts from original sources. 

Several scholars have written about British activities from the 
mid-eighteenth century to independence and have incorpo- 



58 



Historical Setting 



rated new data garnered from various state archives and family 
histories as well as vernacular sources; their works reflect a devi- 
ation from the conventional approach of focusing on gover- 
nor-generals or viceroys. They include C.A. Bayly's Rulers, 
Townsmen, and Bazaars, Robin Jeffrey's People, Princes, and Para- 
mount Power, Judith M. Brown's Modern India: The Origins of an 
Asian Democracy, and Sumit Sarkar's Modern India, 1885-1947. 

The nationalist movement also has generated numerous his- 
tories, both authoritative and controversial. Anil Seal's The 
Emergence of Indian Nationalism was followed by a group repre- 
senting the "Cambridge School" whose critical examination of 
the background of personalities and the issues that dominated 
Indian politics has spawned much discussion. The literature on 
Mahatma Gandhi has increased over the decades. His An Auto- 
biography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth is a leading 
source for the first half of his life, while Joan V. Bondurant's 
The Conquest of Violence and Erick H. Erikson's Gandhi's Truth 
offer probing insights into his strategies and personality. 

Postindependence India has been portrayed variously 
depending on the writer's ideology, use of sources, and analy- 
sis. Sarvepalli Gopal's Jawaharlal Nehru and Zaheer Masani's 
Indira Gandhi provide lucid accounts of the period from the 
perspectives of the prime ministers. Scathing criticism from the 
view of the common man is found in Dilip Hiro's Inside India 
Today and Arun Shourie's Symptoms of Fascism. Pupul Jayakar's 
Indira Gandhi: A Biography presents a balanced view. Although a 
critical biography on Rajiv Gandhi has yet to appear, a number 
of works, such as Rajiv Gandhi: Life and Message by Arun Bhatta- 
charjee and Rajiv Gandhi and Parliament edited by C.K. Jain, 
provide valuable insights. (For further information and com- 
plete citations, see Bibliography.) 



59 



Chapter 2. Geographic and Demographic Setting 



Embroidered peacock depicted on a Rabari petticoat from Gujarat 



INDIA IS A COUNTRY of great diversity with a wide range of 
landform types, including major mountain ranges, deserts, rich 
agricultural plains, and hilly jungle regions. Indeed, the term 
Indian subcontinent aptly describes the enormous extent of the 
earth's surface that India occupies, and any attempt to general- 
ize about its physiography is inaccurate. Diversity is also evident 
in the geographical distribution of India's ethnic and linguistic 
groups. In ancient times, the major river valleys of the Indo- 
Gangetic Plain of South Asia were among the great cradles of 
civilization in Asia, as were the valleys of the Tigris and Euphra- 
tes rivers in West Asia and the Huang He (Yellow River) in East 
Asia. As a result of thousands of years of cultural and political 
expansion and amalgamation, contemporary India has come 
to include many different natural and cultural regions. 

The Himalayas (and the nations of Nepal and Bhutan) form 
India's northern frontier with China. Pakistan borders India to 
the west and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) to the east. 
Although both were formerly part of the British Indian 
Empire, India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947 
and East Pakistan became independent Bangladesh in 1971. 
The boundaries of the Indian polity are not fully demarcated 
because of regional ethnic and political disputes and are the 
source of occasional tensions. 

When the 1991 national census was taken, India's popula- 
tion was approximately 846.3 million. The annual population 
growth rate from 1981 to 1991 was 2 percent. Accounting for 
only 2.4 percent of the world's landmass, India is home to 16 
percent of the world's population. Every sixth person in the 
world in the early 1990s was an Indian. It is generally assumed 
that India's population will surpass the 1 billion mark some 
time before the next census in 2001. In July 1995, the popula- 
tion was estimated at 936.5 million. 

Some 38 percent of all Indians were officially listed as living 
below the poverty line in fiscal year (FY — see Glossary) 1991. 
This number represented an increase from the low mark of 26 
percent in FY 1989, but the rise was believed to be only tempo- 
rary by some observers. Although government-sponsored 
health clinics are widely available in the mid-1990s, their 
emphasis is on curative techniques rather than preventive med- 
icine. However, the lack of such basic amenities as safe, potable 



63 



India: A Country Study 

water for much of the population is indicative of the severity of 
health problems. This situation has traditionally led most Indi- 
ans to have large families as their only form of insurance 
against sickness and for their care in old age. Although family 
planning programs are becoming integrated with the programs 
of urban and rural health clinics, no official birth control pro- 
grams have widespread support. The severity of the acquired 
immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic in India has 
become increasingly apparent to health specialists, but local 
awareness of the causes of and ways to prevent the spread of 
AIDS is growing slowly. 

Although many public schools are inadequate, improve- 
ments to the education system overall have been substantial 
since 1947. In the mid-1990s, however, only about 50 percent of 
children between the ages of six and fourteen are enrolled in 
schools. The goal of compulsory and free primary and middle 
school education is embodied in the Indian constitution but 
has been elusive. The National Policy on Education of 1986 
sought to institutionalize universal primary education by set- 
ting 1990 as a target date for the education of all children up to 
eleven years of age. The ability of India's education system to 
meet this goal has been constrained by lack of adequate finan- 
cial resources. Important achievements have been made, how- 
ever, with implementation of the nonformal education system 
and adult education programs. Whereas public education is 
generally below standard, education standards in private 
schools are very high. There also are high standards among the 
elite institutions in the higher education system. 

Geography 

Principal Regions 

India's total land mass is 2,973,190 square kilometers and is 
divided into three main geological regions: the Indo-Gangetic 
Plain, the Himalayas, and the Peninsula region (see fig. 5). The 
Indo-Gangetic Plain and those portions of the Himalayas 
within India are collectively known as North India. South India 
consists of the peninsular region, often termed simply the Pen- 
insula. On the basis of its physiography, India is divided into 
ten regions: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the northern mountains 
of the Himalayas, the Central Highlands, the Deccan or Penin- 
sular Plateau, the East Coast (Coromandel Coast in the south), 
the West Coast (Konkan, Kankara, and Malabar coasts), the 



64 




Figure 5. Topography and Drainage 
66 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

Great Indian Desert (a geographic feature known as the Thar 
Desert in Pakistan) and the Rann of Kutch, the valley of the 
Brahmaputra in Assam, the northeastern hill ranges surround- 
ing the Assam Valley, and the islands of the Arabian Sea and 
the Bay of Bengal. 

Indo-Gangetic Plain 

In social and economic terms, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is the 
most important region of India. The plain is a great alluvial 
crescent stretching from the Indus River system in Pakistan to 
the Punjab Plain (in both Pakistan and India) and the Haryana 
Plain to the delta of the Ganga (or Ganges) in Bangladesh 
(where it is called the Padma). Topographically the plain is 
homogeneous, with only floodplain bluffs and other related 
features of river erosion and changes in river channels forming 
important natural features. 

Two narrow terrain belts, collectively known as the Terai, 
constitute the northern boundary of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. 
Where the foothills of the Himalayas encounter the plain, 
small hills known locally as ghar (meaning house in Hindi) 
have been formed by coarse sands and pebbles deposited by 
mountain streams. Groundwater from these areas flows on the 
surface where the plains begin and converts large areas along 
the rivers into swamps. The southern boundary of the plain 
begins along the edge of the Great Indian Desert in the state of 
Rajasthan and continues east along the base of the hills of the 
Central Highlands to the Bay of Bengal (see fig. 1). The hills, 
varying in elevation from 300 to 1,200 meters, lie on a general 
east-west axis. The Central Highlands are divided into north- 
ern and southern parts. The northern part is centered on the 
Aravalli Range of eastern Rajasthan. In the northern part of 
the state of Madhya Pradesh, the Malwa Plateau comprises the 
southern part of the Central Highlands and merges with the 
Vindhya Range to the south. The main rivers that flow through 
the southern part of the plain — the Narmada, the Tapti, and 
the Mahanadi — delineate North India from South India (see 
Rivers, this ch.). 

Some geographers subdivide the Indo-Gangetic Plain into 
three parts: the Indus Valley (mostly in Pakistan), the Punjab 
(divided between India and Pakistan) and Haryana plains, and 
the middle and lower Ganga. These regional distinctions are 
based primarily on the availability of water. By another defini- 
tion, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is divided into two drainage 



67 



India: A Country Study 

basins by the Delhi Ridge; the western part consists of the Pun- 
jab Plain and the Haryana Plain, and the eastern part consists 
of the Ganga-Brahmaputra drainage systems. This divide is only 
300 meters above sea level, contributing to the perception that 
the Indo-Gangetic Plain appears to be continuous between the 
two drainage basins. The Punjab Plain is centered in the land 
between five rivers: the Jhelum, the Chenab, the Ravi, the Beas, 
and the Sutlej. (The name Punjab comes from the Sanskrit pan- 
cha ab, meaning five waters or rivers.) 

Both the Punjab and Haryana plains are irrigated with water 
from the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers. The irrigation projects 
emanating from these rivers have led to a decrease in the flow 
of water reaching the lower drainage areas in the state of Pun- 
jab in India and the Indus Valley in Pakistan. The benefits that 
increased irrigation has brought to farmers in the state of 
Haryana are controversial in light of the effects that irrigation 
has had on agricultural life in the Punjab areas of both India 
and Pakistan. 

The middle Ganga extends from the Yamuna River in the 
west to the state of West Bengal in the east. The lower Ganga 
and the Assam Valley are more lush and verdant than the mid- 
dle Ganga. The lower Ganga is centered in West Bengal from 
which it flows into Bangladesh and, after joining the Jamuna 
(as the lower reaches of the Brahmaputra are known in Ban- 
gladesh), forms the delta of the Ganga. The Brahmaputra 
(meaning son of Brahma) rises in Tibet (China's Xizang 
Autonomous Region) as the Yarlung Zangbo River, flows 
through Arunachal Pradesh and Assam, and then crosses into 
Bangladesh. Average annual rainfall increases moving west to 
east from approximately 600 millimeters in the Punjab Plain to 
1,500 millimeters around the lower Ganga and Brahmaputra. 

The Himalayas 

The Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world, 
extend along the northern frontiers of Pakistan, India, Nepal, 
Bhutan, and Burma. They were formed geologically as a result 
of the collision of the Indian subcontinent with Asia. This pro- 
cess of plate tectonics is ongoing, and the gradual northward 
drift of the Indian subcontinent still causes earthquakes (see 
Earthquakes, this ch.). Lesser ranges jut southward from the 
main body of the Himalayas at both the eastern and western 
ends. The Himalayan system, about 2,400 kilometers in length 
and varying in width from 240 to 330 kilometers, is made up of 



68 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

three parallel ranges — the Greater Himalayas, the Lesser 
Himalayas, and the Outer Himalayas — sometimes collectively 
called the Great Himalayan Range. The Greater Himalayas, or 
northern range, average approximately 6,000 meters in height 
and contain the three highest mountains on earth: Mount 
Everest (8,796 meters) on the China-Nepal border; K2 (8,611 
meters, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen, and in China as 
Qogir Feng) in an area claimed by India, Pakistan, and China; 
and Kanchenjunga (8,598 meters) on the India-Nepal border. 
Many major mountains are located entirely within India, such 
as Nanda Devi (7,817 meters) in the state of Uttar Pradesh. 
The snow line averages 4,500 to 6,000 meters on the southern 
side of the Greater Himalayas and 5,500 to 6,000 on the north- 
ern side. Because of climatic conditions, the snow line in the 
eastern Himalayas averages 4,300 meters, while in the western 
Himalayas it averages 5,800 meters. 

The Lesser Himalayas, located in northwestern India in the 
states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, in north-central 
India in the state of Sikkim, and in northeastern India in the 
state of Arunachal Pradesh, range from 1,500 to 5,000 meters 
in height. Located in the Lesser Himalayas are the hill stations 
of Shimla (Simla) and Darjiling (Darjeeling). During the colo- 
nial period, these and other hill stations were used by the Brit- 
ish as summer retreats to escape the intense heat of the plains. 
It is in this transitional vegetation zone that the contrasts 
between the bare southern slopes and the forested northern 
slopes become most noticeable. 

The Outer or Southern Himalayas, averaging 900 to 1,200 
meters in elevation, lie between the Lesser Himalayas and the 
Indo-Gangetic Plain. In Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, 
this southernmost range is often referred to as the Siwalik 
Hills. It is possible to identify a fourth, and northernmost 
range, known as the Trans-Himalaya. This range is located 
entirely on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, north of the great west- 
to-east trending valley of the Yarlung Zangbo River. Although 
the Trans-Himalaya Range is divided from the Great Hima- 
layan Range for most of its length, it merges with the Great 
Himalayan Range in the western section — the Karakoram 
Range — where India, Pakistan, and China meet. 

The southern slopes of each of the Himalayan ranges are too 
steep to accumulate snow or support much tree life; the north- 
ern slopes generally are forested below the snow line. Between 
the ranges are extensive high plateaus, deep gorges, and fertile 



69 



India: A Country Study 

valleys, such as the vales of Kashmir and Kulu. The Himalayas 
serve a very important purpose. They provide a physical screen 
within which the monsoon system operates and are the source 
of the great river systems that water the alluvial plains below 
(see Climate, this ch.). As a result of erosion, the rivers coming 
from the mountains carry vast quantities of silt that enrich the 
plains. 

The area of northeastern India adjacent to Burma and Ban- 
gladesh consists of numerous hill tracts, averaging between 
1,000 and 2,000 meters in elevation, that are not associated 
with the eastern part of the Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh. 
The Naga Hills, rising to heights of more than 3,000 meters, 
form the watershed between India and Burma. The Mizo Hills 
are the southern part of the northeastern ranges in India. The 
Garo, Khasi, and Jaintia hills are centered in the state of 
Meghalaya and, isolated from the northeastern ranges, divide 
the Assam Valley from Bangladesh to the south and west. 

The Peninsula 

The Peninsula proper is an old, geologically stable region 
with an average elevation between 300 and 1,800 meters. The 
Vindhya Range constitutes the main dividing line between the 
geological regions of the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Penin- 
sula. This range lies north of the Narmada River, and when 
viewed from there, it is possible to discern the prominent 
escarpments that rise between 800 and 1,400 meters. The 
Vindhya Range defines the north-central and northwestern 
boundary of the Peninsula, and the Chota Nagpur Plateau of 
southern Bihar forms the northeastern boundary. The uplift- 
ing of the plateau of the central Peninsula and its eastward tilt 
formed the Western Ghats, a line of hills running from the 
Tapti River south to the up of the Peninsula. The Eastern Ghats 
mark the eastern end of the plateau; they begin in the hills of 
the Mahanadi River basin and converge with the Western 
Ghats at the Peninsula's southern tip. 

The interior of the Peninsula, south of the Narmada River, 
often termed the Deccan Plateau or simply the Deccan (from 
the Sanskrit daksina, meaning south), is a series of plateaus 
topped by rolling hills and intersected by many rivers. The pla- 
teau averages roughly 300 to 750 meters in elevation. Its major 
rivers — the Godavari, the Krishna, and the Kaveri — rise in the 
Western Ghats and flow eastward into the Bay of Bengal. 



70 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

The coastal plain borders the plateau. On the northwestern 
side, it is characterized by tidal marshes, drowned valleys, and 
estuaries; and in the south by lagoons, marshes, and beach 
ridges. Coastal plains on the eastern side are wider than those 
in the west; they are focused on large river deltas that serve as 
the centers of human settlement. 

Offshore Islands 

India's offshore islands, constituting roughly one-quarter of 
1 percent of the nation's territory, lie in two groups located off 
the east and west coasts. The northernmost point of the union 
territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands lies 1,100 kilo- 
meters southeast of Calcutta. Situated in the Bay of Bengal in a 
chain stretching some 800 kilometers, the Andaman Islands 
comprise 204 islands and islets, and their topography is charac- 
terized by hills and narrow valleys. Although their location is 
tropical, the climate of the islands is tempered by sea breezes; 
rainfall is irregular. The Nicobar Islands, which are south of the 
Andaman Islands, comprise nineteen islands, some with flat, 
coral-covered surfaces and others with hills. The islands have a 
nearly equatorial climate, heavy rainfall, and high tempera- 
tures. The union territory of Lakshadweep (the name means 
100,000 islands) in the Arabian Sea, comprises — from north to 
south — the Amindivi, Laccadive, Cannanore, and Minicoy 
islands. The islands, only ten of which are inhabited, are spread 
throughout an area of approximately 77,000 square kilometers. 
The islands are low-lying coral-based formations capable of lim- 
ited cultivation. 

Coasts and Borders 

India has 7,000 kilometers of seacoast and shares 14,000 kilo- 
meters of land frontier with six nations: Pakistan, China, Nepal, 
Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Burma. India claims a twelve-nauti- 
cal-mile territorial sea and an exclusive economic zone of 200 
nautical miles. The territorial seas total 314,400 square kilome- 
ters. 

In the mid-1990s, India had boundary disagreements with 
Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh; border distances are there- 
fore approximations. The partition of India in 1947 established 
two India-Pakistan frontiers: one on the west and one on the 
east (East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971). 

Disputes over the state of Jammu and Kashmir led to hostili- 
ties between India and Pakistan in 1947. The January 1, 1949, 



71 



India: A Country Study 

cease-fire arranged by the United Nations (UN) divided con- 
trol of Kashmir. India controls Jammu, the Vale of Kashmir, 
and the capital, Srinagar, while Pakistan controls the mountain- 
ous area to the northwest. Neither side accepts a divided Kash- 
mir as a permanent solution. India regards as illegal the 1963 
China-Pakistan border agreement, which ceded to China a por- 
tion of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. The two sides also dispute 
the Siachen Glacier near the Karakoram Pass. Further India- 
Pakistan hostilities in the 1965 war were settled through the 
Soviet-brokered Tashkent Declaration. 

In 1968 an international tribunal settled the dispute over the 
Rann of Kutch, a region of salt flats that is submerged for six 
months of the year in the state of Gujarat. The following year, a 
new border was demarcated that recognized Pakistan's claim to 
about 10 percent of the area. 

In 1992 India completed fencing most of the 547-kilometer- 
long section of the boundary between the Indian state of Pun- 
jab and the Pakistani province of Punjab. This measure was 
undertaken because of the continuing unrest in the region 
caused by both ethnic and religious disputes among the local 
Indian population and infiltrators from both sides of the fron- 
tier. The more rugged terrain north of Punjab along the entire 
cease-fire line between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kash- 
mir continues to be subject to infiltration and local strife (see 
Political Issues, ch. 8: South Asia, ch. 9; Insurgent Movements 
and External Subversion, ch. 10). 

The 2,000-kilometer-long border with China has eastern, 
central, and western sections. In the western section, the bor- 
der regions of Jammu and Kashmir have been the scene of con- 
flicting claims since the nineteenth century. China has not 
accepted India's definitions of the boundary and has carried 
out defense and economic activities in parts of eastern Kashmir 
since the 1950s. In the 1960s, China finished construction of a 
motor road across Aksai Chin (a region under dispute between 
India and China), the main transportation route linking 
China's Xinjiang-Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet. 

In the eastern section, the China-India boundary follows the 
McMahon Line laid down in 1914 by Sir Arthur Henry McMa- 
hon, the British plenipotentiary to a conference of Indian, Brit- 
ish, and Chinese representatives at Simla (now known as 
Shimla, Himachal Pradesh). The Simla Convention, as the 
agreement is known, set the boundary between India and 
Tibet. Although the British and Tibetan representatives signed 



72 



1 { 




Elephants bathing in the Gomati River, a tributary of the Ganga in 

Uttar Pradesh 

Courtesy Foreign Geography Collection, Library of Congress 

the agreement on July 3, 1914, the Chinese delegate declined 
to sign. The line agreed to by Britain and Tibet generally fol- 
lows the crest of the eastern Himalayas from Bhutan to Burma. 
It serves as a legal boundary, although the Chinese have never 
formally accepted it. China continued to claim roughly the 
entire area of Arunachal Pradesh south of the McMahon Line 
in the early 1990s. In 1962 China and India fought a brief bor- 
der war in this region, and China occupied certain areas south 
of the line for several months (see Nehru's Legacy, ch 1; The 
Experience of Wars, ch. 10). India and China took a major step 
toward resolving their border disputes in 1981 by opening 
negotiations on the issue. Agreements and talks held in 1993 
and 1995 eased tensions along the India-China border (see 
China, ch. 9). Sikkim, which became an Indian state in 1975, 
forms the small central section of India's northern border and 
lies between Nepal and Bhutan. 

India's border with Bangladesh is essentially the same as it 
was before East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971. Some 
minor disputes continued to occur over the size and number of 
the numerous enclaves each country had on either side of the 



73 



India: A Country Study 



border. These enclaves were established during the period 
from 1661 to 1712 during righting between the Mughal Empire 
and the principality of Cooch Behar. This complex pattern of 
enclaves was preserved by the British administration and 
passed on intact to India and Pakistan. 

The 1,300-kilometer frontier with Burma has been delimited 
but not completely demarcated. On March 10, 1967, the 
Indian and Burmese governments signed a bilateral treaty 
delimiting the boundary in detail. India also has a maritime 
boundary with Burma in the area of the northern Andaman 
Islands and Burma's Coco Islands in the Bay of Bengal. India's 
borders with Nepal and Bhutan have remained unchanged 
since the days of British rule. In 1977 India signed an accord 
with Indonesia demarcating the entire maritime boundary 
between the two countries. One year earlier, a similar accord 
was signed with the Maldives. 

Rivers 

The country's rivers are classified as Himalayan, peninsular, 
coastal, and inland-drainage basin rivers. Himalayan rivers are 
snow fed and maintain a high to medium rate of flow through- 
out the year. The heavy annual average rainfall levels in the 
Himalayan catchment areas further add to their rates of flow. 
During the monsoon months of June to September, the catch- 
ment areas are prone to flooding. The volume of the rain-fed 
peninsular rivers also increases. Coastal streams, especially in 
the west, are short and episodic. Rivers of the inland system, 
centered in western Rajasthan state, are few and frequently dis- 
appear in years of scant rainfall. The majority of the South 
Asia's major rivers flow through broad, shallow valleys and 
drain into the Bay of Bengal. 

The Ganga River basin, India's largest, includes approxi- 
mately 25 percent of the nation's area; it is bounded by the 
Himalayas in the north and the Vindhya Range to the south. 
The Ganga has its source in the glaciers of the Greater Himala- 
yas, which form the frontier between India and Tibet in north- 
western Uttar Pradesh. Many Indians believe that the 
legendary source of the Ganga, and several other important 
Asian rivers, lies in the sacred Mapam Yumco Lake (known to 
the Indians as Manasarowar Lake) of western Tibet located 
approximately 75 kilometers northeast of the India-China- 
Xepal tripoint. In the northern part of the Ganga River basin, 
practically all of the tributaries of the Ganga are perennial 



74 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

streams. However, in the southern part, located in the states of 
Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, many of the tributaries are not 
perennial. 

The Brahmaputra has the greatest volume of water of all the 
rivers in India because of heavy annual rainfall levels in its 
catchment basin. At Dibrugarh the annual rainfall averages 
2,800 millimeters, and at Shillong it averages 2,430 millimeters. 
Rising in Tibet, the Brahmaputra flows south into Arunachal 
Pradesh after breaking through the Great Himalayan Range 
and dropping rapidly in elevation. It continues to fall through 
gorges impassable by man in Arunachal Pradesh until finally 
entering the Assam Valley where it meanders westward on its 
way to joining the Ganga in Bangladesh. 

The Mahanadi, rising in the state of Madhya Pradesh, is an 
important river in the state of Orissa. In the upper drainage 
basin of the Mahanadi, which is centered on the Chhattisgarh 
Plain, periodic droughts contrast with the situation in the delta 
region where floods may damage the crops in what is known as 
the rice bowl of Orissa. Hirakud Dam, constructed in the mid- 
dle reaches of the Mahanadi, has helped in alleviating these 
adverse effects by creating a reservoir. 

The source of the Godavari is northeast of Bombay (Mumbai 
in the local Marathi language) in the state of Maharashtra, and 
the river follows a southeasterly course for 1,400 kilometers to 
its mouth on the Andhra Pradesh coast. The Godavari River 
basin area is second in size only to the Ganga; its delta on the 
east coast is also one of the country's main rice-growing areas. 
It is known as the "Ganga of the South," but its discharge, 
despite the large catchment area, is moderate because of the 
medium levels of annual rainfall, for example, about 700 milli- 
meters at Nasik and 1,000 millimeters at Nizamabad. 

The Krishna rises in the Western Ghats and flows east into 
the Bay of Bengal. It has a poor flow because of low levels of 
rainfall in its catchment area — 660 millimeters annually at 
Pune. Despite its low discharge, the Krishna is the third longest 
river in India. 

The source of the Kaveri is in the state of Karnataka, and the 
river flows southeastward. The waters of the river have been a 
source of irrigation since antiquity; in the early 1990s, an esti- 
mated 95 percent of the Kaveri was diverted for agricultural use 
before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The delta of the Kaveri 
is so mature that the main river has almost lost its link with the 



75 



India: A Country Study 



sea, as the Kollidam, the distributary of the Kaveri, bears most 
of the flow. 

The Narmada and the Tapti are the only major rivers that 
flow into the Arabian Sea. The Narmada rises in Madhya 
Pradesh and crosses the state, passing swiftly through a narrow 
valley between the Vindhya Range and spurs of the Satpura 
Range. It flows into the Gulf of Khambhat (or Cambay). The 
shorter Tapti follows a generally parallel course, between 
eighty kilometers and 160 kilometers to the south of the Nar- 
mada, flowing through the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat 
on its way into the Gulf of Khambhat. 

Harnessing the waters of the major rivers that flow from the 
Himalayas is an issue of great concern in Nepal, India, and 
Bangladesh. Issues of flood control, drought prevention, 
hydroelectric power generation, job creation, and environmen- 
tal quality — but also traditional lifestyles and cultural continu- 
ities — are at stake as these countries grapple with the political 
realities, both domestic and international, of altering the flow 
of the Ganga and Brahmaputra. Although India, Nepal, and 
Bangladesh seek to alleviate problems through cooperation 
over Himalayan rivers, irrigation projects altering the flow of 
Punjab-area rivers are likely to continue to be an irritant 
between India and Pakistan — countries between which cooper- 
ation is less likely to occur — in the second half of the 1990s. 
Internally, large dam projects, such as one on the Narmada 
River, are also controversial (see Development Programs, ch. 
7). 

Climate 

The Himalayas isolate South Asia from the rest of Asia. 
South of these mountains, the climate, like the terrain, is 
highly diverse, but some geographers give it an overall, one- 
word characterization — violent. What geographers have in 
mind is the abruptness of change and the intensity of effect 
when change occurs — the onset of the monsoon rains, sudden 
flooding, rapid erosion, extremes of temperature, tropical 
storms, and unpredictable fluctuations in rainfall. Broadly 
speaking, agriculture in India is constantly challenged by 
weather uncertainty. 

It is possible to identify seasons, although these do not occur 
uniformly throughout South Asia. The Indian Meteorological 
Service divides the year into four seasons: the relatively dry, 
cool winter from December through February; the dry, hot 



76 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

summer from March through May; the southwest monsoon 
from June through September when the predominating south- 
west maritime winds bring rains to most of the country; and the 
northeast, or retreating, monsoon of October and November. 

The southwest monsoon blows in from sea to land. The 
southwest monsoon usually breaks on the west coast early in 
June and reaches most of South Asia by the first week in July 
(see fig. 6). Because of the critical importance of monsoon 
rainfall to agricultural production, predictions of the mon- 
soon's arrival date are eagerly watched by government planners 
and agronomists who need to determine the optimal dates for 
plantings. 

Theories about why monsoons occur vary. Conventionally, 
scientists have attributed monsoons to thermal changes in the 
Asian landmass. Contemporary theory cites other factors — the 
barrier of the Himalayas and the sun's northward tilt (which 
shifts the jet stream north). The hot air that rises over South 
Asia during April and May creates low-pressure areas into 
which the cooler, moisture-bearing winds from the Indian 
Ocean flow. These circumstances set off a rush of moisture-rich 
air from the southern seas over South Asia. 

The southwest monsoon occurs in two branches. After 
breaking on the southern part of the Peninsula in early June, 
the branch known as the Arabian Sea monsoon reaches Bom- 
bay around June 10, and it has settled over most of South Asia 
by late June, bringing cooler but more humid weather. The 
other branch, known as the Bay of Bengal monsoon, moves 
northward in the Bay of Bengal and spreads over most of 
Assam by the first week of June. On encountering the barrier 
of the Great Himalayan Range, it is deflected westward along 
the Indo-Gangetic Plain toward New Delhi. Thereafter the two 
branches merge as a single current bringing rains to the 
remaining parts of North India in July. 

The withdrawal of the monsoon is a far more gradual pro- 
cess than its onset. It usually withdraws from northwest India by 
the beginning of October and from the remaining parts of the 
country by the end of November. During this period, the 
northeast winds contribute to the formation of the northeast 
monsoon over the southern half of the Peninsula in October. It 
is also known as the retreating monsoon because it follows in 
the wake of the southwest monsoon. The states of Tamil Nadu, 
Karnataka, and Kerala receive most of their rainfall from the 
northeast monsoon during November and December. How- 



77 



India: A Country Study 



ever, 80 percent of the country receives most of its rainfall from 
the southwest monsoon from June to September. 

South Asia is subject to a wide range of climates — from the 
subfreezing Himalayan winters to the tropical climate of the 
Coromandel Coast and from the damp, rainy climate in the 
states of Assam and West Bengal to the arid Great Indian 
Desert. Based on precipitation and temperature, experts 
define seven climatic regions: the Himalayas, Assam and West 
Bengal, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Western Ghats and coast, 
the Deccan (the interior of the Peninsula south of the Xar- 
mada River), and the Eastern Ghats and coast (see fig. 7). 

In the Himalayan region, climate varies with altitude. At 
about 2,000 meters, the average summer temperature is near 
18°C; at 4,500 meters, it is rarely above 0°C. In the valleys, sum- 
mer temperatures reach between 32°C and 38°C. The eastern 
Himalayas receive as much as 1,000 to 2,000 millimeters more 
precipitation than do the Western Himalayas, and floods are 
common. 

Assam and West Bengal are extremely wet and humid. The 
southeastern part of the state of Meghalaya has the world's 
highest average annual rainfall, some 10,900 millimeters. 

The Indo-Gangetic Plain has a varied climatic pattern. Rain- 
fall and temperature ranges vary significantly between the east- 
ern and western extremes (see table 2, Appendix). In the 
Peninsula region, the Western Ghats and the adjoining coast 
receive heavy rains during the southwest monsoon. Rainfall in 
the peninsular interior averages about 650 millimeters a year, 
although there is considerable variation in different localities 
and from year to vear. The Eastern Ghats receive less rainfall 
than the western coast. Rainfall there ranges between 900 and 
1,300 millimeters annually. 

The northern Deccan region, bounded by the Western 
Ghats, the Vindhya Range and the Narmada River to the north, 
and the Eastern Ghats, receives most of its annual rainfall dur- 
ing the summer monsoon season. The southern Deccan area is 
in a "rain shadow" and receives only fifty to 1,000 millimeters of 
rainfall a year. Temperature ranges are wide — from some 15°C 
to 38°C — making this one of India's most comfortable climatic 
areas. 

Throughout most of non-Himalayan India, the heat can be 
oppressive and sometimes, such as was experienced in 1994 
and 1995, literally can be a killer. Hot, relatively dry weather is 
the norm before the southwest monsoons, which, along with 



78 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

heavy rains and high humidity, bring cloud cover that lowers 
temperatures slightly. Temperatures reach the upper 30s°C 
and can reach as high as 48°C during the day in the premon- 
soon months. 

Earthquakes 

India has experienced some of the world's most devastating 
earthquakes. Some 19,000 people died in Kangra District, 
northeastern Himachal Pradesh, in April 1905, and more than 
30,000 died in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh in September 
1993. Although resulting in less extensive loss of life, major 
earthquakes occurred in Assam in 1950 (more than 1,500 
killed) and in Uttarkashi District, Uttar Pradesh, in 1991 (1,600 
killed). 

Population 

Structure and Dynamics 

The 1991 final census count gave India a total population of 
846,302,688. However, estimates of India's population vary 
widely. According to the Population Division of the United 
Nations Department of International Economic and Social 
Affairs, the population had already reached 866 million in 
1991. The Population Division of the United Nations Eco- 
nomic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific 
(ESGAP) projected 896.5 million by mid-1993 with a 1.9 per- 
cent annual growth rate. The United States Bureau of the Cen- 
sus, assuming an annual population growth rate of 1.8 percent, 
put India's population in July 1995 at 936,545,814. These 
higher projections merit attention in light of the fact that the 
Planning Commission had estimated a figure of 844 million for 
1991 while preparing the Eighth Five-Year Plan (FY 1992-96; 
see Population Projections, this ch.). 

India accounts for some 2.4 percent of the world's landmass 
but is home to about 16 percent of the global population. The 
magnitude of the annual increase in population can be seen in 
the fact that India adds almost the total population of Australia 
or Sri Lanka every year. A 1992 study of India's population 
notes that India has more people than all of Africa and also 
more than North America and South America together. 
Between 1947 and 1991, India's population more than dou- 
bled. 



81 




Figure 6. Rainfall 
80 



India: A Country Study 



Throughout the twentieth century, India has been in the 
midst of a demographic transition. At the beginning of the cen- 
tury, endemic disease, periodic epidemics, and famines kept 
the death rate high enough to balance out the high birth rate. 
Between 1911 and 1920, the birth and death rates were virtu- 
ally equal — about forty-eight births and forty-eight deaths per 
1,000 population. The increasing impact of curative and pre- 
ventive medicine (especially mass inoculations) brought a 
steady decline in the death rate. By the mid-1990s, the esti- 
mated birth rate had fallen to twenty-eight per 1,000, and the 
estimated death rate had fallen to ten per 1,000. Clearly, the 
future configuration of India's population (indeed the future 
of India itself) depends on what happens to the birth rate (see 
fig. 8). Even the most optimistic projections do not suggest that 
the birth rate could drop below twenty per 1,000 before the 
year 2000. India's population is likely to exceed the 1 billion 
mark before the 2001 census. 

The upward population spiral began in the 1920s and is 
reflected in intercensal growth increments. South Asia's popu- 
lation increased roughly 5 percent between 1901 and 1911 and 
actually declined slightly in the next decade. Population 
increased some 10 percent in the period from 1921 to 1931 
and 13 to 14 percent in the 1930s and 1940s. Between 1951 and 
1961, the population rose 21.5 percent. Between 1961 and 
1971, the country's population increased by 24.8 percent. 
Thereafter a slight slowing of the increase was experienced: 
from 1971 to 1981, the population increased by 24.7 percent, 
and from 1981 to 1991, by 23.9 percent (see table 3, Appen- 
dix). 

Population density has risen concomitantly with the massive 
increases in population. In 1901 India counted some seventy- 
seven persons per square kilometer; in 1981 there were 216 
persons per square kilometer; by 1991 there were 267 persons 
per square kilometer — up almost 25 percent from the 1981 
population density (see table 4, Appendix). India's average 
population density is higher than that of any other nation of 
comparable size. The highest densities are not only in heavily 
urbanized regions but also in areas that are mostly agricultural. 

Population growth in the years between 1950 and 1970 cen- 
tered on areas of new irrigation projects, areas subject to refu- 
gee resettlement, and regions of urban expansion. Areas where 
population did not increase at a rate approaching the national 
average were those facing the most severe economic hardships, 



82 




Figure 7. Temperature 
84 



A 



® National capital 
• Populated place 

Average annual temperature 
(in degrees Celsius) 

P~l Below 20° 
I I 20°-27.5° 
r~~l Above 27.5° 



300 Kilometers 



150 



300 Miles 




ANDAMAN °r\ 
ISLANDS f. 



NICOBAR 
ISLANDS % 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

overpopulated rural areas, and regions with low levels of urban- 
ization. 

The 1991 census, which was carried out under the direction 
of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India 
(part of the Ministry of Home Affairs), in keeping with the pre- 
vious two censuses, used the term urban agglomerations. An 
urban agglomeration forms a continuous urban spread and 
consists of a city or town and its urban outgrowth outside the 
statutory limits. Or, an urban agglomerate may be two or more 
adjoining cities or towns and their outgrowths. A university 
campus or military base located on the outskirts of a city or 
town, which often increases the actual urban area of that city or 
town, is an example of an urban agglomeration. In India urban 
agglomerations with a population of 1 million or more — there 
were twenty-four in 1991 — are referred to as metropolitan 
areas. Places with a population of 100,000 or more are termed 
"cities" as compared with "towns," which have a population of 
less than 100,000. Including the metropolitan areas, there were 
299 urban agglomerations with more than 100,000 population 
in 1991. These large urban agglomerations are designated as 
Class I urban units. There were five other classes of urban 
agglomerations, towns, and villages based on the size of their 
populations: Class II (50,000 to 99,999), Class III (20,000 to 
49,999), Class IV (10,000 to 19,999), Class V (5,000 to 9,999), 
and Class VI (villages of less than 5,000; see table 5, Appendix). 

The results of the 1991 census revealed that around 221 mil- 
lion, or 26.1 percent, of Indian's population lived in urban 
areas. Of this total, about 138 million people, or 16 percent, 
lived in the 299 urban agglomerations. In 1991 the twenty-four 
metropolitan cities accounted for 51 percent of India's total 
population living in Class I urban centers, with Bombay and 
Calcutta the largest at 12.6 million and 10.9 million, respec- 
tively (see table 6, Appendix). 

In the early 1990s, growth was the most dramatic in the cities 
of central and southern India. About twenty cities in those two 
regions experienced a growth rate of more than 100 percent 
between 1981 and 1991. Areas subject to an influx of refugees 
also experienced noticeable demographic changes. Refugees 
from Bangladesh, Burma, and Sri Lanka contributed substan- 
tially to population growth in the regions in which they settled. 
Less dramatic population increases occurred in areas where 
Tibetan refugee settlements were founded after the Chinese 
annexation of Tibet in the 1950s. 



85 




Figure 7. Temperature 
84 



India: A Country Study 



AGE-GROUP 

75 and over 
70-74 
65-69 
60-64 
55-59 
50-54 
45-49 
40-44 
35-39 
30-34 
25-29 
20-24 
15-19 
10-14 

5-9 

0-4 

60 50 40 30 20 10 10 20 30 40 50 60 
POPULATION IN MILLIONS 

1990 



Source: Based on information from Eduard Bos, My T. Vu, Ann Levin, and Rodolfo A. 
Bulatao, World Population Projections, 1992-93 Edition, Baltimore, 1992, 266. 

Figure 8. Population by Age and Sex, 1990 and 2000 

The majority of districts had urban populations ranging on 
average from 15 to 40 percent in 1991. According to the 1991 
census, urban clusters predominated in the upper part of the 
Indo-Gangetic Plain: in the Punjab and Haryana plains, and in 
part of western Uttar Pradesh. The lower part of the Indo- 
Gangetic Plain in southeastern Bihar, southern West Bengal, 
and northern Orissa also experienced increased urbanization. 
Similar increases occurred in the western coastal state of 
Gujarat and the union territory of Daman and Diu. In the Cen- 
tral Highlands in Madhva Pradesh and Maharashtra, urbaniza- 
tion was most noticeable in the river basins and adjacent 
plateau regions of the Mahanadi, Narmada, and Tapti rivers. 




86 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 



AGE-GROUP 

75 and over 
70-74 
65-69 
60-64 
55-59 
50-54 
45-49 
40-44 
35-39 
30-34 
25-29 
20-24 
15-19 
10-14 
5-9 
0-4 



MALES 



60 50 



FEMALES 



40 30 20 10 10 20 30 40 50 60 

POPULATION IN MILLIONS 

(Projected) 
2000 



The coastal plains and river deltas of the east and west coasts 
also showed increased levels of urbanization. 

The hilly, inaccessible regions of the Peninsular Plateau, the 
northeast, and the Himalayas remain sparsely settled. As a gen- 
eral rule, the lower the population density and the more 
remote the region, the more likely it is to count a substantial 
portion of tribal (see Glossary) people among its population 
(see Tribes, ch. 4). Urbanization in some sparsely settled 
regions is more developed than would seem warranted at first 
glance at their limited natural resources. Areas of western 
India that were formerly princely states (in Gujarat and the 
desert regions of Rajasthan) have substantial urban centers 
that originated as political-administrative centers and since 
independence have continued to exercise hegemony over their 
hinterlands. 

The vast majority of Indians, nearly 625 million, or 73.9 per- 
cent, in 1991 lived in what are called villages of less than 5,000 



87 



India: A Country Study 

people or in scattered hamlets and other rural settlements (see 
The Village Community, ch. 5) . The states with proportionately 
the greatest rural populations in 1991 were the states of Assam 
(88.9 percent), Sikkim (90.9 percent) and Himachal Pradesh 
(91.3 percent), and the tiny union territory of Dadra and 
Nagar Haveli (91.5 percent). Those with the smallest rural pop- 
ulations proportionately were the states of Gujarat (65.5 per- 
cent), Maharashtra (61.3 percent), Goa (58.9 percent), and 
Mizoram (53.9 percent) . Most of the other states and the union 
territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were near the 
national average. 

Two other categories of population that are closely scruti- 
nized by the national census are the Scheduled Castes (see 
Glossary) and Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary). The greatest 
concentrations of Scheduled Caste members in 1991 lived in 
the states of Andhra Pradesh (10.5 million, or nearly 16 per- 
cent of the state's population), Tamil Nadu (10.7 million, or 19 
percent), Bihar (12.5 million, or 14 percent), West Bengal (16 
million, or 24 percent), and Uttar Pradesh (29.3 million, or 21 
percent). Together, these and other Scheduled Caste members 
comprised about 139 million people, or more than 16 percent 
of the total population of India. Scheduled Tribe members rep- 
resented only 8 percent of the total population (about 68 mil- 
lion). They were found in 1991 in the greatest numbers in 
Orissa (7 million, or 23 percent of the state's population), 
Maharashtra (7.3 million, or 9 percent), and Madhya Pradesh 
(15.3 million, or 23 percent). In proportion, however, the pop- 
ulations of states in the northeast had the greatest concentra- 
tions of Scheduled Tribe members. For example, 31 percent of 
the population of Tripura, 34 percent of Manipur, 64 percent 
of Arunachal Pradesh, 86 percent of Meghalaya, 88 percent of 
Nagaland, and 95 percent of Mizoram were Scheduled Tribe 
members. Other heavy concentrations were found in Dadra 
and Nagar Haveli, 79 per cent of which was composed of Sched- 
uled Tribe members, and Lakshadweep, with 94 percent of its 
population being Scheduled Tribe members. 

Population Projections 

The Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India 
(both positions are held by the same person) oversees an ongo- 
ing intercensal effort to help maintain accurate annual esti- 
mates of population. The projection method used in the mid- 
1980s to predict the 1991 population, which was accurate 



88 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

enough to come within 3 million (843 million) of the official, 
final census count in 1991 (846 million), was based on the Sam- 
ple Registration System. The system employed birth and death 
rates from each of the twenty-five states, six union territories, 
and one national capital territory plus statistical data on effec- 
tive contraceptive use. Assuming a 1.7 percent error rate, 
India's projection for 1991 was close to those made by the 
World Bank and the UN. 

Projections of future population growth prepared by the 
Registrar General, assuming the highest level of fertility, show 
decreasing growth rates: 1.8 percent by 2001, 1.3 percent by 
2011, and 0.9 percent by 2021. These rates of growth, however, 
will put India's population above 1.0 billion in 2001, at 1.2 bil- 
lion in 2011, and at 1.3 billion in 2021. ESGAP projections pub- 
lished in 1993 were close to those made by India: nearly 1.2 
billion by 2010, still considerably less than the 2010 population 
projection for China of 1.4 billion. In 1992 the Washington- 
based Population Reference Bureau had a similar projection to 
ESCAP's for India's population in 2010 and projected nearly 
1.4 billion by 2025 (nearly the same as projected for 2025 by 
the United Nations Department of International Economic 
and Social Affairs). According to other UN projections, India's 
population may stabilize at around 1.7 billion by 2060. 

Such projections also show an increasingly aging population, 
with 76 million (8 percent of the population) age sixty and 
above in 2001, 102 million (9 percent) in 2011, and 137 million 
(11 percent) in 2021. These figures coincide closely with those 
estimated by the United States Bureau of the Census, which 
also projected that whereas the median age was twenty-two in 
1992, it was expected to increase to twenty-nine by 2020, plac- 
ing the median age in India well above all of its South Asian 
neighbors except Sri Lanka. 

Population and Family Planning Policy 

Population growth has long been a concern of the govern- 
ment, and India has a lengthy history of explicit population 
policy. In the 1950s, the government began, in a modest way, 
one of the earliest national, government-sponsored family 
planning efforts in the developing world. The annual popula- 
tion growth rate in the previous decade (1941 to 1951) had 
been below 1.3 percent, and government planners optimisti- 
cally believed that the population would continue to grow at 
roughly the same rate. 



89 



India: A Country Study 

Implicitly, the government believed that India could repeat 
the experience of the developed nations where industrializa- 
tion and a rise in the standard of living had been accompanied 
by a drop in the population growth rate. In the 1950s, existing 
hospitals and health care facilities made birth control informa- 
tion available, but there was no aggressive effort to encourage 
the use of contraceptives and limitation of family size. By the 
late 1960s, many policy makers believed that the high rate of 
population growth was the greatest obstacle to economic devel- 
opment. The government began a massive program to lower 
the birth rate from forty-one per 1,000 to a target of twenty to 
twenty-five per 1,000 by the mid-1970s. The National Popula- 
tion Policy adopted in 1976 reflected the growing consensus 
among policy makers that family planning would enjoy only 
limited success unless it was part of an integrated program 
aimed at improving the general welfare of the population. The 
policy makers assumed that excessive family size was part and 
parcel of poverty and had to be dealt with as integral to a gen- 
eral development strategy. Education about the population 
problem became part of school curriculum under the Fifth 
Five-Year Plan (FY 1974-78). Cases of government-enforced 
sterilization made many question the propriety of state-spon- 
sored birth control measures, however. 

During the 1980s, an increased number of family planning 
programs were implemented through the state governments 
with financial assistance from the central government. In rural 
areas, the programs were further extended through a network 
of primary health centers and subcenters. By 1991, India had 
more than 150,000 public health facilities through which fam- 
ily planning programs were offered (see Health Care, this ch.). 
Four special family planning projects were implemented under 
the Seventh Five-Year Plan (FY 1985-89). One was the All-India 
Hospitals Post-partum Programme at district- and subdistrict- 
level hospitals. Another program involved the reorganization 
of primary health care facilities in urban slum areas, while 
another project reserved a specified number of hospital beds 
for tubal ligature operations. The final program called for the 
renovation or remodelling of intrauterine device (IUD) rooms 
in rural family welfare centers attached to primary health care 
facilities. 

Despite these developments in promoting family planning, 
the 1991 census results showed that India continued to have 
one of the most rapidly growing populations in the world. 



90 




A family planning billboard exhorting "Fewer children, Happy 
people" and "2 or 3 children, that's all" 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 

Between 1981 and 1991, the annual rate of population growth 
was estimated at about 2 percent. The crude birth rate in 1992 
was thirty per 1,000, only a small change over the 1981 level of 
thirty-four per 1,000. However, some demographers credit this 
slight lowering of the 1981-91 population growth rate to mod- 
erate successes of the family planning program. In FY 1986, the 
number of reproductive-age couples was 132.6 million, of 
whom only 37.5 percent were estimated to be protected effec- 
tively by some form of contraception. A goal of the seventh 
plan was to achieve an effective couple protection rate of 42 
percent, requiring an annual increase of 2 percent in effective 
use of contraceptives. 

The heavy centralization of India's family planning pro- 
grams often prevents due consideration from being given to 
regional differences. Centralization is encouraged to a large 
extent by reliance on central government funding. As a result, 
many of the goals and assumptions of national population con- 
trol programs do not correspond exactly with local attitudes 
toward birth control. At the Jamkhed Project in Maharashtra, 
which has been in operation since the late 1970s and covers 
approximately 175 villages, the local project directors noted 
that it required three to four years of education through direct 



91 



India: A Country Study 

contact with a couple for the idea of family planning to gain 
acceptance. Such a timetable was not compatible with targets. 
However, much was learned about policy and practice from the 
Jamkhed Project. The successful use of women's clubs as a 
means of involving women in community-wide family planning 
activities impressed the state government to the degree that it 
set about organizing such clubs in every village in the state. 
The project also serves as a pilot to test ideas that the govern- 
ment wants to incorporate into its programs. Government 
medical staff members have been sent to Jamkhed for training, 
and the government has proposed that the project assume the 
task of selecting and training government health workers for 
an area of 2.5 million people. 

Another important family planning program is the Project 
for Community Action in Family Planning. Located in Karna- 
taka, the project operates in 154 project villages and 255 con- 
trol villages. All project villages are of sufficient size to have a 
health subcenter, although this advantage is offset by the fact 
that those villages are the most distant from the area's primary 
health centers. As at Jamkhed, the project is much assisted by 
local voluntary groups, such as the women's clubs. The local 
voluntary groups either provide or secure sites suitable as dis- 
tribution depots for condoms and birth control pills and also 
make arrangements for the operation of sterilization camps. 
Data provided by the Project for Community Action in Family 
Planning show that important achievements have been realized 
in the field of population control. By the mid-1980s, for exam- 
ple, 43 percent of couples were using family planning, a full 14 
percent above the state average. The project has significantly 
improved the status of women, involving them and empower- 
ing them to bring about change in their communities. This 
contribution is important because of the way in which the 
deeply entrenched inferior status of women in many communi- 
ties in India negates official efforts to decrease the fertility rate. 

Studies have found that most couples in fact regard family 
planning positively. However, the common fertility pattern in 
India diverges from the two-child family that policy makers 
hold as ideal. Women continue to marry young; in the mid- 
1990s, they average just over eighteen years of age at marriage. 
When women choose to be sterilized, financial inducements, 
although helpful, are not the principal incentives. On average, 
those accepting sterilization already have four living children, 
of whom two are sons. 



92 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

The strong preference for sons is a deeply held cultural ideal 
based on economic roots. Sons not only assist with farm labor 
as they are growing up (as do daughters) but they provide 
labor in times of illness and unemployment and serve as their 
parents' only security in old age. Surveys done by the New 
Delhi Operations Research Group in 1991 indicated that as 
many as 72 percent of rural parents continue to have children 
until at least two sons are born; the preference for more than 
one son among urban parents was tabulated at 53 percent. 
Once these goals have been achieved, birth control may be 
used or, especially in agricultural areas, it may not if additional 
child labor, later adult labor for the family, is deemed desir- 
able. 

A significant result of this eagerness for sons is that the 
Indian population has a deficiency of females. Slightly higher 
female infant mortality rates (seventy-nine per 1,000 versus sev- 
enty-eight per 1,000 for males) can be attributed to poor health 
care, abortions of female fetuses, and female infanticide. 
Human rights activists have estimated that there are at least 
10,000 cases of female infanticide annually throughout India. 
The cost of theoretically illegal dowries and the loss of daugh- 
ters to their in-laws' families are further disincentives for some 
parents to have daughters. Sons, of course continue to carry on 
the family line (see Family Ideals, ch. 5). The 1991 census 
revealed that the national sex ratio had declined from 934 
females to 1,000 males in 1981 to 927 to 1,000 in 1991. In only 
one state — Kerala, a state with low fertility and mortality rates 
and the nation's highest literacy — did females exceed males. 
The census found, however, that female life expectancy at birth 
had for the first time exceeded that for males. 

India's high infant mortality and elevated mortality in early 
childhood remain significant stumbling blocks to population 
control (see Health Conditions, this ch.). India's fertility rate is 
decreasing, however, and, at 3.4 in 1994, it is lower than those 
of its immediate neighbors (Bangladesh had a rate of 4.5 and 
Pakistan had 6.7). The rate is projected to decrease to 3.0 by 
2000, 2.6 by 2010, and 2.3 by 2020. 

During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the growth rate had 
formed a sort of plateau. Some states, such as Kerala, Tamil 
Nadu, and, to a lesser extent, Punjab, Maharashtra, and Karna- 
taka, had made progress in lowering their growth rates, but 
most did not. Under such conditions, India's population may 
not stabilize until 2060. 



93 



In d i a: A Co u n try Stu dy 



Health 

Health Conditions 

Life Expectancy and Mortality 

The average Indian male born in the 1990s can expect to 
live 58.5 years; women can expect to live onlv slightlv longer 
(59.6 years), according to 1995 estimates. Life expectancv has 
risen dramatically throughout the centurv from a scant twenty 
vears in the 1911-20 period. Although men enjoved a slightlv 
longer life expectancv throughout the first part of the twenti- 
eth centurv, by 1990 women had slightlv surpassed men. The 
death rate declined from 48.6 per 1.000 in the 1910-20 period 
to fifteen per 1.000 in the 1970s, and improved thereafter, 
reaching ten per 1.000 by 1990,. a rate that held steady through 
the mid-1990s. India's high infant mortality rate was estimated 
to exceed 76 per 1.000 live births in 1995 (see table 7. Appen- 
dix). Thirtv percent of infants had low birth weights., and the 
death rate for children aged one to four years was around ten 
per 1.000 of the population. 

According to a 1989 National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau 
report., less than 15 percent of the population was adequately 
nourished, although 96 percent received an adequate number 
of calories per dav. In 1986 dailv average intake was 2.238 calo- 
ries as compared with 2.630 calories in China. According to UN 
findings, caloric intake per dav in India had fallen slightlv to 
2.229 in 1989. lending credence to the concerns of some 
experts who claimed that annual nutritional standards statistics 
cannot be relied on to show whether poverty is actually being 
reduced. Instead., such studies may actually pick up short-term 
amelioration of poverty as the result of a period of good crops 
rather than a long-term trend. 

Official Indian estimates of the poverty level are based on a 
person's income and corresponding access to minimum nutri- 
tional needs (see Growth since 1980. ch. 6). There were 332 
million people at or below the poverty level in FY 1991. most of 
whom lived in rural areas. 

Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases 

A number of endemic communicable diseases present a seri- 
ous public health hazard in India. Over the years, the govern- 
ment has set up a variety of national programs aimed at 
controlling or eradicating these diseases, including the 



94 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

National Malaria Eradication Programme and the National 
Filaria Control Programme. Other initiatives seek to limit the 
incidence of respiratory infections, cholera, diarrheal diseases, 
trachoma, goiter, and sexually transmitted diseases. 

Smallpox, formerly a significant source of mortality, was 
eradicated as part of the worldwide effort to eliminate that dis- 
ease. India was declared smallpox-free in 1975. Malaria 
remains a serious health hazard; although the incidence of the 
disease declined sharply in the postindependence period, 
India remains one of the most heavily malarial countries in the 
world. Only the Himalaya region above 1,500 meters is spared. 
In 1965 government sources registered only 150,000 cases, a 
notable drop from the 75 million cases in the early postinde- 
pendence years. This success was short-lived, however, as the 
malarial parasites became increasingly resistant to the insecti- 
cides and drugs used to combat the disease. By the mid-1970s, 
there were nearly 6.5 million cases on record. The situation 
again improved because of more conscientious efforts; by 1982 
the number of cases had fallen by roughly two-thirds. This 
downward trend continued, and in 1987 slightly fewer than 1.7 
million cases of malaria were reported. 

In the early 1990s, about 389 million people were at risk of 
infection from filaria parasites; 19 million showed symptoms of 
filariasis, and 25 million were deemed to be hosts to the para- 
sites. Efforts at control, under the National Filaria Control Pro- 
gramme, which was established in 1955, have focused on 
eliminating the filaria larvae in urban locales, and by the early 
1990s there were more than 200 filaria control units in opera- 
tion. 

Leprosy, a major public health and social problem, is 
endemic, with all the states and union territories reporting 
cases. However, the prevalence of the disease varies. About 3 
million leprosy cases are estimated to exist nationally, of which 
15 to 20 percent are infectious. The National Leprosy Control 
Programme was started in 1955, but it only received high prior- 
ity after 1980. In FY 1982, it was redesignated as the National 
Leprosy Eradication Programme. Its goal was to achieve eradi- 
cation of the disease by 2000. To that end, 758 leprosy control 
units, 900 urban leprosy centers, 291 temporary hospitalization 
wards, 285 district leprosy units, and some 6,000 lower-level 
centers had been established by March 1990. By March 1992, 
nearly 1.7 million patients were receiving regular multidrug 



95 



India: A Country Study 

treatment, which is more effective than the standard single 
drug therapy (Dapsone monotherapy) . 

India is subject to outbreaks of various diseases. Among 
them is pneumonic plague, an episode of which spread quickly 
throughout India in 1994 killing hundreds before being 
brought under control. Tuberculosis, trachoma, and goiter are 
endemic. In the early 1980s, there were an estimated 10 million 
cases of tuberculosis, of which about 25 percent were infec- 
tious. During 1991 nearly 1.6 million new tuberculosis cases 
were detected. The functions of the Trachoma Control Pro- 
gramme, which started in 1968, have been subsumed by the 
National Programme for the Control of Blindness. Approxi- 
mately 45 million Indians are vision-impaired; roughly 12 mil- 
lion are blind. The incidence of goiter is dominant throughout 
the sub-Himalayan states from Jammu and Kashmir to the 
northeast. There are some 170 million people who are exposed 
to iodine deficiency disorders. Starting in the late 1980s, the 
central government began a salt iodinization program for all 
edible salt, and by 1991 record production — 2.5 million tons — 
of iodized salt had been achieved. There are as well anemias 
related to poor nutrition, a variety of diseases caused by vitamin 
and mineral deficiencies — beriberi, scurvy, osteomalacia, and 
rickets — and a high incidence of parasitic infection. 

Diarrheal diseases, the primary cause of early childhood 
mortality, are linked to inadequate sewage disposal and lack of 
safe drinking water. Roughly 50 percent of all illness is attrib- 
uted to poor sanitation; in rural areas, about 80 percent of all 
children are infected by parasitic worms. Estimates in the early 
1980s suggested that although more than 80 percent of the 
urban population had access to reasonably safe water, fewer 
than 5 percent of rural dwellers did. Waterborne sewage sys- 
tems were woefully overburdened; only around 30 percent of 
urban populations had adequate sewage disposal, but scarcely 
any populations outside cities did. In 1990, according to 
United States sources, only 3 percent of the rural population 
and 44 percent of the urban population had access to sanita- 
tion services, a level relatively low by developing nation stan- 
dards. There were better findings for access to potable water: 
69 percent in the rural areas and 86 percent in urban areas, rel- 
atively high percentages by developing nation standards. In the 
mid-1990s, about 1 million people die each year of diseases 
associated with diarrhea. 



96 



Infant vaccination, rural 
Madhya Pradesh 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



India has an estimated 1.5 million to 2 million cases of can- 
cer, with 500,000 new cases added each year. Annual deaths 
from cancer total around 300,000. The most common malig- 
nancies are cancer of the oral cavity (mostly relating to tobacco 
use and pan chewing — about 35 percent of all cases), cervix, 
and breast. Cardiovascular diseases are a major health prob- 
lem; men and women suffer from them in almost equal num- 
bers (14 million versus 13 million in FY 1990). 

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 

The incidence of AIDS cases in India is steadily rising amidst 
concerns that the nation faces the prospect of an AIDS epi- 
demic. By June 1991, out of a total of more than 900,000 
screened, some 5,130 people tested positive for the human 
immunodeficiency virus (HIV). However, the total number 
infected with HIV in 1992 was estimated by a New Delhi-based 
official of the World Health Organization (WHO) at 500,000, 
and more pessimistic estimates by the World Bank in 1995 sug- 
gested a figure of 2 million, the highest in Asia. Confirmed 
cases of AIDS numbered only 102 by 1991 but had jumped to 
885 by 1994, the second highest reported number in Asia after 
Thailand. Suspected AIDS cases, according to WHO and the 
Indian government, may be in the area of 80,000 in 1995. 



97 



India: A Country Study 

The main factors cited in the spread of the virus are hetero- 
sexual transmission, primarily by urban prostitutes and migrant 
workers, such as long-distance truck drivers; the use of unsteril- 
ized needles and syringes by physicians and intravenous drug 
users; and transfusions of blood from infected donors. Based 
on the HIV infection rate in 1991, and India's position as the 
second most populated country in the world, it was projected 
that by 1995 India would have more HIV and AIDS cases than 
any other country in the world. This prediction appeared true. 
By mid-1995 India had been labeled by the media as "ground 
zero" in the global AIDS epidemic, and new predictions for 
2000 were that India would have 1 million AIDS cases and 5 
million HIV-positive. 

In 1987 the newly formed National AIDS Control Pro- 
gramme began limited screening of the blood supply and mon- 
itoring of high-risk groups. A national education program 
aimed at AIDS prevention and control began in 1990. The first 
AIDS prevention television campaign began in 1991. By the 
mid-1990s, AIDS awareness signs on public streets, condoms 
for sale near brothels, and media announcements were more 
in evidence. There was very negative publicity as well. Posters 
with the names and photographs of known HIV-positive per- 
sons have been seen in New Delhi, and there have been reports 
of HIV patients chained in medical facilities and deprived of 
treatment. 

Fear and ignorance have continued to compound the diffi- 
culty of controlling the spread of the virus, and discrimination 
against AIDS sufferers has surfaced. For example, in 1990 the 
All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi's leading 
medical facility, reportedly turned away two people infected 
with HIV because its staff were too scared to treat them. 

A new program to control the spread of AIDS was launched 
in 1991 by the Indian Council of Medical Research. The coun- 
cil looked to ancient scriptures and religious books for tradi- 
tional messages that preach moderation in sex and describe 
prostitution as a sin. The council considered that the great 
extent to which Indian life-styles are shaped by religion rather 
than by science would cause many people to be confused by 
foreign-modeled educational campaigns relying on television 
and printed booklets. 

The severity of the growing AIDS crisis in India is clear, 
according to statistics compiled during the mid-1990s. In Bom- 
bay, a city of 12.6 million inhabitants in 1991, the HIV infection 



98 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

rate among the estimated 80,000 prostitutes jumped from 1 
percent in 1987 to 30 percent in 1991 to 53 percent in 1993. 
Migrant workers engaging in promiscuous and unprotected 
sexual relations in the big city carry the infection to other sex- 
ual partners on the road and then to their homes and families. 

India's blood supply, despite official blood screening efforts, 
continues to become infected. In 1991 donated blood was 
screened for HIV in only four major cities: New Delhi, Calcutta, 
Madras, and Bombay. One of the leading factors in the contam- 
ination of the blood supply is that 30 percent of the blood 
required comes from private, profit-making banks whose prac- 
tices are difficult to regulate. Furthermore, professional 
donors are an integral part of the Indian blood supply network, 
providing about 30 percent of the annual requirement nation- 
ally. These donors are generally poor and tend to engage in 
high-risk sex and use intravenous drugs more than the general 
population. Professional donors also tend to donate frequently 
at different centers and, in many cases, under different names. 
Reuse of improperly sterilized needles in health care and 
blood-collection facilities also is a factor. India's minister of 
health and family welfare reported in 1992 that only 138 out of 
608 blood banks were equipped for HIV screening. A 1992 
study conducted by the Indian Health Organisation revealed 
that 86 percent of commercial blood donors surveyed were 
HIV-positive. 

Health Care 

Role of the Government 

The Indian constitution charges the states with "the raising 
of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people 
and the improvement of public health" (see The Constitu- 
tional Framework, ch. 8). However, many critics of India's 
National Health Policy, endorsed by Parliament in 1983, point 
out that the policy lacks specific measures to achieve broad 
stated goals. Particular problems include the failure to inte- 
grate health services with wider economic and social develop- 
ment, the lack of nutritional support and sanitation, and the 
poor participatory involvement at the local level. 

Central government efforts at influencing public health 
have focused on the five-year plans, on coordinated planning 
with the states, and on sponsoring major health programs. Gov- 
ernment expenditures are jointly shared by the central and 



99 



India: A Country Study 

state governments. Goals and strategies are set through central- 
state government consultations of the Central Council of 
Health and Family Welfare. Central government efforts are 
administered by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 
which provides both administrative and technical services and 
manages medical education. States provide public services and 
health education. 

The 1983 National Health Policy is committed to providing 
health services to all by 2000 (see table 8, Appendix; The Legis- 
lature, ch. 8). In 1983 health care expenditures varied greatly 
among the states and union territories, from Rsl3 per capita in 
Bihar to Rs60 per capita in Himachal Pradesh (for value of the 
rupee — see Glossary), and Indian per capita expenditure was 
low when compared with other Asian countries outside of 
South Asia. Although government health care spending pro- 
gressively grew throughout the 1980s, such spending as a per- 
centage of the gross national product (GNP — see Glossary) 
remained fairly constant. In the meantime, health care spend- 
ing as a share of total government spending decreased. During 
the same period, private-sector spending on health care was 
about 1.5 times as much as government spending. 

Expenditures 

In the mid-1990s, health spending amounts to 6 percent of 
GDP, one of the highest levels among developing nations. The 
established per capita spending is around Rs320 per year with 
the major input from private households (75 percent). State 
governments contribute 15.2 percent, the central government 
5.2 percent, third-party insurance and employers 3.3 percent, 
and municipal government and foreign donors about 1.3, 
according to a 1995 World Bank study. Of these proportions, 
58.7 percent goes toward primary health care (curative, pre- 
ventive, and promotive) and 38.8 percent is spent on second- 
ary and tertiary inpatient care. The rest goes for nonservice 
costs. 

The fifth and sixth five-year plans (FY 1974-78 and FY 1980- 
84, respectively) included programs to assist delivery of preven- 
tive medicine and improve the health status of the rural popu- 
lation. Supplemental nutrition programs and increasing the 
supply of safe drinking water were high priorities. The sixth 
plan aimed at training more community health workers and 
increasing efforts to control communicable diseases. There 



100 



The Mysore Plateau from 
Chamundi Hill, Karnataka 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



were also efforts to improve regional imbalances in the distri- 
bution of health care resources. 

The Seventh Five-Year Plan (FY 1985-89) budgeted Rs33.9 
billion for health, an amount roughly double the outlay of the 
sixth plan. Health spending as a portion of total plan outlays, 
however, had declined over the years since the first plan in 
1951, from a high of 3.3 percent of the total plan spending in 
FY 1951-55 to 1.9 percent of the total for the seventh plan. 
Mid-way through the Eighth Five-Year Plan (FY 1992-96), how- 
ever, health and family welfare was budgeted at Rs20 billion, or 
4.3 percent of the total plan spending for FY 1994, with an 
additional Rs3.6 billion in the nonplan budget. 

Primary Services 

Health care facilities and personnel increased substantially 
between the early 1950s and early 1980s, but because of fast 
population growth, the number of licensed medical practitio- 
ners per 10,000 individuals had fallen by the late 1980s to three 
per 10,000 from the 1981 level of four per 10,000. In 1991 
there were approximately ten hospital beds per 10,000 individ- 
uals. 

Primary health centers are the cornerstone of the rural 
health care system. By 1991, India had about 22,400 primary 



101 



India: A Country Study 

health centers, 11,200 hospitals, and 27,400 dispensaries. 
These facilities are part of a tiered health care system that fun- 
nels more difficult cases into urban hospitals while attempting 
to provide routine medical care to the vast majority in the 
countryside. Primary health centers and subcenters rely on 
trained paramedics to meet most of their needs. The main 
problems affecting the success of primary health centers are 
the predominance of clinical and curative concerns over the 
intended emphasis on preventive work and the reluctance of 
staff to work in rural areas. In addition, the integration of 
health services with family planning programs often causes the 
local population to perceive the primary health centers as hos- 
tile to their traditional preference for large families. Therefore, 
primary health centers often play an adversarial role in local 
efforts to implement national health policies. 

According to data provided in 1989 by the Ministry of 
Health and Family Welfare, the total number of civilian hospi- 
tals for all states and union territories combined was 10,157. In 
1991 there was a total of 811,000 hospital and health care facili- 
ties beds. The geographical distribution of hospitals varied 
according to local socioeconomic conditions. In India's most 
populous state, Uttar Pradesh, with a 1991 population of more 
than 139 million, there were 735 hospitals as of 1990. In Kerala, 
with a 1991 population of 29 million occupying an area only 
one-seventh the size of Uttar Pradesh, there were 2,053 hospi- 
tals. In light of the central government's goal of health care for 
all by 2000, the uneven distribution of hospitals needs to be 
reexamined. Private studies of India's total number of hospitals 
in the early 1990s were more conservative than official Indian 
data, estimating that in 1992 there were 7,300 hospitals. Of this 
total, nearly 4,000 were owned and managed by central, state, 
or local governments. Another 2,000, owned and managed by 
charitable trusts, received partial support from the govern- 
ment, and the remaining 1,300 hospitals, many of which were 
relatively small facilities, were owned and managed by the pri- 
vate sector. The use of state-of-the-art medical equipment, 
often imported from Western countries, was primarily limited 
to urban centers in the early 1990s. A network of regional can- 
cer diagnostic and treatment facilities was being established in 
the early 1990s in major hospitals that were part of government 
medical colleges. By 1992 twenty-two such centers were in oper- 
ation. Most of the 1,300 private hospitals lacked sophisticated 
medical facilities, although in 1992 approximately 12 percent 



102 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

possessed state-of-the-art equipment for diagnosis and treat- 
ment of all major diseases, including cancer. The fast pace of 
development of the private medical sector and the burgeoning 
middle class in the 1990s have led to the emergence of the new 
concept in India of establishing hospitals and health care facili- 
ties on a for-profit basis. 

By the late 1980s, there were approximately 128 medical col- 
leges — roughly three times more than in 1950. These medical 
colleges in 1987 accepted a combined annual class of 14,166 
students. Data for 1987 show that there were 320,000 registered 
medical practitioners and 219,300 registered nurses. Various 
studies have shown that in both urban and rural areas people 
preferred to pay and seek the more sophisticated services pro- 
vided by private physicians rather than use free treatment at 
public health centers. 

Indigenous or traditional medical practitioners continue to 
practice throughout the country. The two main forms of tradi- 
tional medicine practiced are the ayurvedic (meaning science 
of life) system, which deals with causes, symptoms, diagnoses, 
and treatment based on all aspects of well-being (mental, phys- 
ical, and spiritual), and the unani (so-called Galenic medicine) 
herbal medical practice. A vaidya is a practitioner of the 
ayurvedic tradition, and a hakim (Arabic for a Muslim physi- 
cian) is a practitioner of the unani tradition. These professions 
are frequently hereditary. A variety of institutions offer training 
in indigenous medical practice. Only in the late 1970s did offi- 
cial health policy refer to any form of integration between 
Western-oriented medical personnel and indigenous medical 
practitioners. In the early 1990s, there were ninety-eight 
ayurvedic colleges and seventeen unani colleges operating in 
both the governmental and nongovernmental sectors. 

Education 

Administration and Funding 

Education is divided into preprimary, primary, middle (or 
intermediate), secondary (or high school), and higher levels. 
Primary school includes children of ages six to eleven, orga- 
nized into classes one through five. Middle school pupils aged 
eleven through fourteen are organized into classes six through 
eight, and high school students ages fourteen through seven- 
teen are enrolled in classes nine through twelve. Higher educa- 
tion includes technical schools, colleges, and universities. 



103 



India: A Country Study 

Article 42 of the constitution, an amendment added in 1976, 
transferred education from the state list of responsibilities to 
the central government. Prior to this assumption of direct 
responsibility for promoting educational facilities for all parts 
of society, the central government had responsibility only for 
the education of minorities. Article 43 of the constitution set 
the goal of free and compulsory education for all children 
through age fourteen and gave the states the power to set stan- 
dards for education within their jurisdictions. Despite this joint 
responsibility for education by state and central governments, 
the central government has the preponderant role because it 
drafts the five-year plans, which include education policy and 
some funding for education. Moreover, in 1986 the implemen- 
tation of the National Policy on Education initiated a long-term 
series of programs aimed at improving India's education system 
by ensuring that all children through the primary level have 
access to education of comparable quality irrespective of caste, 
creed, location, or sex. The 1986 policy set a goal that, by 1990, 
all children by age eleven were to have five years of schooling 
or its equivalent in nonformal education. By 1995 all children 
up to age fourteen were to have been provided free and com- 
pulsory education. The 1990 target was not achieved, but by 
setting such goals, the central government was seen as express- 
ing its commitment to the ideal of universal education. 

The Department of Education, part of the Ministry of 
Human Resource Development, implements the central gov- 
ernment's responsibilities in educational matters. The ministry 
coordinates planning with the states, provides funding for 
experimental programs, and acts through the University 
Grants Commission and the National Council of Educational 
Research and Training. These organizations seek to improve 
education standards, develop and introduce instructional 
materials, and design textbooks in the country's numerous lan- 
guages (see The Social Context of Language, ch. 4). The 
National Council of Educational Research and Training col- 
lects data about education and conducts educational research. 

State-level ministries of education coordinate education pro- 
grams at local levels. City school boards are under the supervi- 
sion of both the state education ministry and the municipal 
government. In rural areas, either the district board or the pan- 
chayat (village council — see Glossary) oversees the school 
board (see Local Government, ch. 8). The significant role the 
panchayats play in education often means the politicization of 



104 



A primary school class, Dharmsala, Himachal Pradesh 

Courtesy KarlE. Ryavek 

elementary education because the appointment and transfer 
of teachers often become emotional political issues. 

State governments provide most educational funding, 
although since independence the central government increas- 
ingly has assumed the cost of educational development as out- 
lined under the five-year plans. India spends an average 3 
percent of its GNP on education. Spending for education 
ranged between 4.6 and 7.7 percent of total central govern- 
ment expenditures from the 1950s through the 1970s. In the 
early 1980s, about 10 percent of central and state funds went to 
education, a proportion well below the average of seventy-nine 
other developing countries. More than 90 percent of the 
expenditure was for teachers' salaries and administration. Per 
capita budget expenditures increased from Rs36.5 in FY 1977 
to Rsll2.7 in FY 1986, with highest expenditures found in the 
union territories. Nevertheless, total expenditure per student 
per year by the central and state governments declined in real 
terms. 

Primary and Secondary Education 

Several factors work against universal education in India. 
Although Indian law prohibits the employment of children in 



105 



India: A Country Study 



factories, the law allows them to work in cottage industries, 
family households, restaurants, or in agriculture. Primary and 
middle school education is compulsory. However, only slightly 
more than 50 percent of children between the ages of six and 
fourteen actually attend school, although a far higher percent- 
age is enrolled. School attendance patterns for children vary 
from region to region and according to gender. But it is note- 
worthy that national literacy rates increased from 43.7 percent 
in 1981 to 52.2 percent in 1991 (male 63.9 percent, female 39.4 
percent), passing the 50 percent mark for the first time. There 
are wide regional and gender variations in the literacy rates, 
however; for example, the southern state of Kerala, with a 1991 
literacy rate of about 89.8 percent, ranked first in India in 
terms of both male and female literacy. Bihar, a northern state, 
ranked lowest with a literacy rate of only 39 percent (53 per- 
cent for males and 23 percent for females). School enrollment 
rates also vary greatly according to age (see table 9, Appendix). 

To improve national literacy, the central government 
launched a wide-reaching literacy campaign in July 1993. Using 
a volunteer teaching force of some 10 million people, the gov- 
ernment hoped to have reached around 100 million Indians by 
1997. A special focus was placed on improving literacy among 
women. 

A report in 1985 by the Ministry of Education, entitled Chal- 
lenge of Education: A Policy Perspective, showed that nearly 60 per- 
cent of children dropped out between grades one and five. 
(The Ministry of Education was incorporated into the Ministry 
of Human Resources in 1985 as the Department of Education. 
In 1988 the Ministry of Human Resources was renamed the 
Ministry of Human Resource Development.) Of 100 children 
enrolled in grade one, only twenty-three reached grade eight. 
Although many children lived within one kilometer of a pri- 
mary school, nearly 20 percent of all habitations did not have 
schools nearby. Forty percent of primary schools were not of 
masonry construction. Sixty percent had no drinking water 
facilities, 70 percent had no library facilities, and 89 percent 
lacked toilet facilities. Single-teacher primary schools were 
commonplace, and it was not unusual for the teacher to be 
absent or even to subcontract the teaching work to unqualified 
substitutes (see table 10, Appendix). 

The improvements that India has made in education since 
independence are nevertheless substantial. From the first plan 
until the beginning of the sixth (1951-80), the percentage of 



106 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

the primary school-age population attending classes more than 
doubled. The number of schools and teachers increased dra- 
matically. Middle schools and high schools registered the steep- 
est rates of growth. The number of primary schools increased 
by more than 230 percent between 1951 and 1980. During the 
same period, however, the number of middle schools increased 
about tenfold. The numbers of teachers showed similar rates of 
increase. The proportion of trained teachers among those 
working in primary and middle schools, fewer than 60 percent 
in 1950, was more than 90 percent in 1987 (see table 11, 
Appendix). However, there was considerable variation in the 
geographical distribution of trained teachers in the states and 
union territories in the 1986-87 school year. Arunachal 
Pradesh had the highest percentage (60 percent) of untrained 
teachers in primary schools, and Assam had the highest per- 
centage (72 percent) of untrained teachers in middle schools. 
Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Chandigarh, and Pondicherry (Puduch- 
cheri) reportedly had no untrained teachers at either kind of 
school. 

Various forms of private schooling are common; many 
schools are strictly private, whereas others enjoy government 
grants-in-aid but are run privately. Schools run by church and 
missionary societies are common forms of private schools. 
Among India's Muslim population, the madrasa, a school 
attached to a mosque, plays an important role in education 
(see Islamic Traditions in South Asia, ch. 3). Some 10 percent 
of all children who enter the first grade are enrolled in private 
schools. The dropout rate in these schools is practically nonex- 
istent. 

Traditional notions of social rank and hierarchy have greatly 
influenced India's primary school system. A dual system existed 
in the early 1990s, in which middle-class families sent their chil- 
dren to private schools while lower-class families sent their chil- 
dren to underfinanced and underequipped municipal and 
village schools. Evolving middle-class values have made even 
nursery school education in the private sector a stressful event 
for children and parents alike. Tough entrance interviews for 
admission, long classroom hours, heavy homework assign- 
ments, and high tuition rates in the mid-1990s led to charges of 
"lost childhood" for preschool children and acknowledgment 
of both the social costs and enhanced social benefits for the 
families involved. 



107 



India: A Country Study 

The government encourages the study of classical, modern, 
and tribal languages with a view toward the gradual switch from 
English to regional languages and to teaching Hindi in non- 
Hindi speaking states. As a result, there are schools conducted 
in various languages at all levels. Classical and foreign language 
training most commonly occurs at the postsecondary level, 
although English is also taught at the lower levels (see Diversity, 
Use, and Policy; Hindi and English, ch. 4). 

Colleges and Universities 

Receiving higher education, once the nearly exclusive 
domain of the wealthy and privileged, since independence has 
become the aspiration of almost every student completing high 
school. In the 1950-51 school year, there were some 360,000 
students enrolled in colleges and universities; by the 1990-91 
school year, the number had risen to nearly 4 million, a more 
than tenfold increase in four decades. At that time, there were 
177 universities and university-level institutions (more than six 
times the number at independence), some 500 teacher train- 
ing colleges, and several thousand other colleges. 

There are three kinds of colleges in India. The first type, 
government colleges, are found only in those states where pri- 
vate enterprise is weak or which were at one time controlled by 
princes (see Company Rule, 1757-1857, ch. 1). The second 
kind are colleges managed by religious organizations and the 
private sector. Many of the latter institutions were founded 
after 1947 by wealthy business owners and politicians wishing 
to gain local fame and importance. Professional colleges com- 
prise the third kind and consist mostly of medical, teacher- 
training, engineering, law, and agricultural colleges. More than 
50 percent of them are sponsored and managed by the govern- 
ment. However, about 5 percent of these colleges are privately 
run without government grant support. They charge fees of 
ten to twelve times the amount of the government-run col- 
leges. The profusion of new engineering colleges in India in 
the late 1980s and early 1990s caused concern in official educa- 
tion circles that the overall quality and reputation of India's 
higher education system would be threatened by these new 
schools, which operated mainly on a for-profit basis. As the gov- 
ernment tightened its support to higher education in the early 
1990s, colleges and universities came under considerable finan- 
cial stress. 



108 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

The All-India Council of Technical Education is empowered 
to regulate the establishment of any new private professional 
colleges to limit their proliferation. In 1992 the Karnataka 
High Court directed the state government to rescind permis- 
sion to nine organizations to start new engineering and medi- 
cal colleges in the state. 

Gaining admission to a nonprofessional college is not 
unduly difficult except in the case of some select colleges that 
are particularly competitive. Students encounter greater diffi- 
culties in gaining admission to professional colleges in such 
fields as architecture, business, medicine, and dentistry. 

There are four categories of universities. The largest num- 
ber are teaching universities that maintain and run a large 
number of colleges. Unitary institutions, such as Allahabad 
University and Lucknow University, make up the second kind. 
The third kind are the twenty-six agricultural universities, each 
managed by the state in which it is located. Technical universi- 
ties constitute the fourth kind. In the late 1980s, more techni- 
cal universities, such as the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological 
University in the state of Hyderabad, were founded. There 
were also proposals to found medical universities in some 
states. By 1990 Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu already had 
established such universities. Out of the 177 universities in the 
country, only ten are funded by the central government. The 
majority of universities are managed by the states, which estab- 
lish them and provide funding. 

There was a high rate of attrition among students in higher 
education in the 1980s. A substantial portion failed their exam- 
inations more than once, and large numbers dropped out; only 
about one out of four students successfully completed the full 
course of studies. Even those students who were successful 
could not count on a university degree to assure them employ- 
ment. In the early postindependence years, a bachelor's degree 
often provided entrance to the elite, but in contemporary 
India, it provides a chance to become a white-collar worker at a 
relatively modest salary. The government traditionally has been 
the principal employer of educated manpower. 

State governments play a powerful role in the running of all 
but the national universities. Political considerations, if not 
outright political patronage, play a significant part in appoint- 
ments. The state governor is usually the university chancellor, 
and the vice chancellor, who actually runs the institution, is 
usually a political appointee. Appointments are subject to polit- 



109 



India: A Country Study 

ical jockeying, and state governments have control over grants 
and other forms of recognition. Caste affiliation and regional 
background are recognized criteria for admission and appoint- 
ments in many colleges. To offset the inequities implicit in 
such practices, a certain number of places are reserved for 
members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. 

Education and Society 

Historically, Indian education has been elitist. Traditional 
Hindu education was tailored to the needs of Brahman (see 
Glossary) boys who were taught to read and write by a Brah- 
man teacher (see The Roots of Indian Religion, ch. 3). During 
Mughal rule (1526-1858), Muslim education was similarly elit- 
ist, although its orientation reflected economic factors rather 
than those of caste background. Under British company and 
crown rule (1757-1947), official education policies reinforced 
the preexisting elitist tendencies of South Asian education. By 
tying entrance and advancement in government service to aca- 
demic education, colonial rule contributed to the legacy of an 
education system geared to preserving the position and prerog- 
atives of the more privileged. Education served as a "gate- 
keeper," permitting an avenue of upward mobility to those few 
able to muster sufficient resources. 

Even the efforts of the nationalistic Indian National Con- 
gress (the Congress — see Glossary) faltered in the face of the 
entrenched interests defending the existing system of educa- 
tion (see Origins of the Congress and the Muslim League, ch. 
1). Early in the 1900s, the Congress called for national educa- 
tion, placing an emphasis on technical and vocational training. 
In 1920 the Congress initiated a boycott of government-aided 
and government-controlled schools; it founded several 
"national" schools and colleges, but to little avail. The rewards 
of British-style education were so great that the boycott was 
largely ignored, and the Congress schools temporarily disap- 
peared. 

Postprimary education has traditionally catered to the inter- 
ests of the higher and upwardly mobile castes (see Changes in 
the Caste System, ch. 5). Despite substantial increases in the 
spread of middle schools and high schools' growth in enroll- 
ment, secondary schooling is necessary for those bent on social 
status and mobility through acquisition of an office job. 

In the nineteenth century, postprimary students were dis- 
proportionately Brahmans; their traditional concern with 



110 




learning gave them an advantage under British education poli- 
cies. By the early twentieth century, several powerful cultivator 
castes had realized the advantages of education as a passport to 
political power and had organized to acquire formal learning. 
"Backward" castes (usually economically disadvantaged Shu- 
dras) who had acquired some wealth took advantage of their 
status to secure educational privilege. In the mid-1980s, the 
vast majority of students making it through middle school to 
high school continued to be from high-level castes and middle- 
to upper-class families living in urban areas (see Varna, Caste, 
and Other Divisions, ch. 5). A region's three or four most pow- 
erful castes typically dominated the school system. In addition, 
the widespread role of private education and the payment of 
fees even at government-run schools discriminated against the 
poor. 

The goals of the 1986 National Policy on Education 
demanded vastly increased enrollment. In order to have 
attained universal elementary education in 1995, the 1981 
enrollment level of 72.7 million would have had to increase to 
160 million in 1995. Although the seventh plan suggested the 
adoption of new education methods to meet these goals, such 
as the promotion of television and correspondence courses 
(often referred to as "distance learning") and open school sys- 
tems, the actual extended coverage of children was not very 



111 



India: A Country Study 



great. Many critics of India's education policy argue that total 
school enrollment is not actually a goal of the government con- 
sidering the extent of society's vested interest in child labor. In 
this context, education can be seen as a tool that one social 
class uses to prevent the rise of another. Middle-class Indians 
frequently distinguish between the children of the poor as 
"hands," or children who must be taught to work, and their 
own children as "minds," or children who must be taught to 
learn. The upgraded curriculum with increased requirements 
in English and in the sciences appears to be causing difficulties 
for many children. Although all the states have recognized that 
curriculum reform is needed, no comprehensive plan to link 
curricular changes with new ways of teaching, learning, teacher 
training, and examination methods has been implemented. 

The government instituted an important program for 
improving physical facilities through a phased drive in all pri- 
mary schools in the country called Operation Blackboard. 
Under Operation Blackboard, Rsl billion was allocated — but 
not spent — in 1987 to pay for basic amenities for village 
schools, such as toys and games, classroom materials, black- 
boards, and maps. This financial allotment averaged Rs2,200 
for each government-run primary school. Additional goals of 
Operation Blackboard included construction of classrooms 
that would be usable in all weather, and an additional teacher, 
preferably a woman, in all single-teacher schools. 

The nonformal education system implemented in 1979 was 
the major government effort to educate dropouts and other 
unenrolled children. Special emphasis was given to the nonfor- 
mal education system in the nine states regarded by the gov- 
ernment as having deficient education systems: Andhra 
Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, 
Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. A large 
number of children who resided in these states could not 
attend formal schools because they were employed, either with 
or without wages. Seventy-five percent of the country's children 
who were not enrolled in school resided in these states in the 
1980s. 

The 1986 National Policy on Education gave new impetus to 
the nonformal education system. Revised and expanded pro- 
grams focused on involving voluntary organizations and train- 
ing talented and dedicated young men and women in local 
communities as instructors. The results of a late 1980s inte- 
grated pilot project for nonformal and adult education for 



112 



m - ^ 




Temple complex dedicated to Jagannath — one of the names of 
Vishnu — viewed from the monastery library opposite, 

atPuri, Orissa 

Courtesy Bernice Huffman Collection, Library of Congress 



113 



India: A Country Study 

women and girls in the Lucknow district of Uttar Pradesh pro- 
vide important data for analyzing recent implementation 
trends and initial results of both the nonformal education sys- 
tem and adult education in India. Under this project, 300 cen- 
ters were opened in rural parts of the district with the approval 
of the Department of Education, the central government, and 
the state government of Uttar Pradesh with financial and advi- 
sory support from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, 
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 

Because of the shortage of women teachers in rural areas of 
Uttar Pradesh, in the pilot project nonformal education for 
girls aged six to fourteen was integrated with the adult educa- 
tion program for women aged fifteen to thirty-five, so that the 
same staff and infrastructure could be used. Most of the fami- 
lies of the project participants were in subsistence farming or 
engaged as farmhands, clerical workers, and petty merchants. 
Often the brothers of female participants attended a formal 
school situated about one or two kilometers from their homes. 
Most of the 300 instructors for the 300 centers were young 
women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Each cen- 
ter averaged twenty-five women and twenty girl participants. 
The physical facilities of the centers varied from village to vil- 
lage. Classes might be held on the balcony of a brick house, 
within a temple, in a room of a mud-walled house, or under 
open thatch-roof structures. Besides focusing on the acquisi- 
tion of literacy skills, the project increased participant motiva- 
tion by also offering instruction in household work, such as 
sewing, knitting, and preserving food. In 1987 a UNESCO mis- 
sion to evaluate progress in this project in the areas of func- 
tional literacy, vocational skills, and civic awareness observed 
that randomly chosen participants in both nonformal and 
adult education classes effectively demonstrated their reading 
and writing skills at appropriate levels. As a result of many such 
local programs, literacy rates improved between 1981 and 
1991. Male literacy increased from 56.5 percent in 1981 to 64.2 
percent in 1991 while women's literacy rate increased from 
29.9 percent in 1981 to 39.2 percent in 1991. 

Understanding India's health care and education systems 
contributes to the larger understanding of this complex 
nation's diverse society. General trends and averages concern- 
ing social conditions on a national level may not adequately 
describe how human activity is expressed spatially and tempo- 
rally in specific areas. The great variations in local environmen- 



114 



Geographic and Demographic Setting 

tal and social conditions require that national and state or 
union territory programs aimed at improving the quality of life 
not adhere too strictly to any one standard plan. Local climate, 
topography, and drainage patterns all need to be considered in 
terms of how they relate to local forms of land use and ethnic 
and linguistic groupings. Increasing urbanization in India also 
complicates efforts at monitoring local conditions. Only with 
the full support and understanding of India's many rural and 
urban residents will new ways of focusing India's immense 
human resources toward the goals of developing and conserv- 
ing renewable natural resources, limiting population growth, 
providing increased health care, and achieving education for 
all be successful. 

# # * 

Indian atlases useful for gaining a basic understanding of 
India's physical, political, and cultural geography include A 
Social and Economic Atlas of India edited by S. Muthiah and the 
River Basin Atlas of India prepared by the Central Board for the 
Prevention and Control of Water Pollution. V.S. Katiyar's The 
Indian Monsoon and Its Frontiers provides a good description and 
analysis of one of the major facets of South Asian climatology. 
A standard work on postpartition Indian boundaries in terms 
of their political status is John Robert Victor Prescott's Map of 
Mainland Asia by Treaty. A Historical Atlas of South Asia edited by 
Joseph E. Schwartzberg, is another extremely useful resource. 

Official information on India's demography can be found in 
the Census of India 1991, Final Population Totals. These results 
also provide useful data on literacy levels in India. Additional 
insight into the contemporary field of Indian population policy 
is given in G. Narayana andJ.F. Kantner's Doing the Needful: The 
Dilemma of India's Population Policy. Concise official data on 
health care are listed in the Ministry of Planning's annual Sta- 
tistical Abstract. An informed outsider's view of the health situa- 
tion in India is presented in Roger Jeffery's The Politics of Health 
in India. 

Contemporary official education plans and goals are out- 
lined inJ.C. Aggarwal's National Policy on Education: Agenda for 
India 2001. A more critical account of India's education system 
has been compiled by UNESCO's Asia-Pacific Program of Edu- 
cation for All and published in National Studies: India. Detailed 
field results of a recent UNESCO project to provide nonformal 



115 



India: A Country Study 



and adult education for women and girls can be found in 
Simultaneous Education for Women and Girls: Report of a Project. 
Myron Weiner's The Child and State in India has useful analysis 
of education policy. (For further information and complete 
citations, see Bibliography.) 



116 



Chapter 3. Religious Life 



Embroidered floral motif depicted on a Rabari petticoat from Gujarat 



IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW INDIA without understanding 
its religious beliefs and practices, which have a large impact on 
the personal lives of most Indians and influence public life on 
a daily basis. Indian religions have deep historical roots that are 
recollected by contemporary Indians. The ancient culture of 
South Asia, going back at least 4,500 years, has come down to 
India primarily in the form of religious texts. The artistic heri- 
tage, as well as intellectual and philosophical contributions, has 
always owed much to religious thought and symbolism. Con- 
tacts between India and other cultures have led to the spread 
of Indian religions throughout the world, resulting in the 
extensive influence of Indian thought and practice on South- 
east and East Asia in ancient times and, more recently, in the 
diffusion of Indian religions to Europe and North America. 
Within India, on a day-to-day basis, the vast majority of people 
engage in ritual actions that are motivated by religious systems 
that owe much to the past but are continuously evolving. Reli- 
gion, then, is one of the most important facets of Indian his- 
tory and contemporary life. 

A number of world religions originated in India, and others 
that started elsewhere found fertile ground for growth there. 
Devotees of Hinduism, a varied grouping of philosophical and 
devotional traditions, officially numbered 687.6 million peo- 
ple, or 82 percent of the population in the 1991 census (see 
table 13, Appendix). Buddhism andjainism, ancient monastic 
traditions, have had a major influence on Indian art, philoso- 
phy, and society and remain important minority religions in 
the late twentieth century. Buddhists represented 0.8 percent 
of the total population while Jains represented 0.4 percent in 
1991. 

Islam spread from the West throughout South Asia, from the 
early eighth century, to become the largest minority religion in 
India. In fact, with 101.5 million Muslims (12.1 percent of the 
population), India has at least the fourth largest Muslim popu- 
lation in the world (after Indonesia with 174.3 million, Pakistan 
with 124 million, and Bangladesh with 103 million; some ana- 
lysts put the number of Indian Muslims even higher — 128 mil- 
lion in 1994, which would give India the second largest Muslim 
population in the world). 



119 



India: A Country Study 

Sikhism, which started in Punjab in the sixteenth century, 
has spread throughout India and the world since the mid-nine- 
teenth century. With nearly 16.3 million adherents, Sikhs rep- 
resent 1.9 percent of India's population. 

Christianity, represented by almost all denominations, traces 
its history in India back to the time of the apostles and counted 
19.6 million members in India in 1991. Judaism and Zoroastri- 
anism, arriving originally with traders and exiles from the West, 
are represented by small populations, mostly concentrated on 
India's west coast. A variety of independent tribal religious 
groups also are lively carriers of unique ethnic traditions. 

The listing of the major belief systems only scratches the sur- 
face of the remarkable diversity in Indian religious life. The 
complex doctrines and institutions of the great traditions, pre- 
served through written documents, are divided into numerous 
schools of thought, sects, and paths of devotion. In many cases, 
these divisions stem from the teachings of great masters, who 
arise continually to lead bands of followers with a new revela- 
tion or path to salvation. In contemporary India, the migration 
of large numbers of people to urban centers and the impact of 
modernization have led to the emergence of new religions, 
revivals, and reforms within the great traditions that create 
original bodies of teaching and kinds of practice. In other 
cases, diversity appears through the integration or accultura- 
tion of entire social groups — each with its own vision of the 
divine — within the world of village farming communities that 
base their culture on literary and ritual traditions preserved in 
Sanskrit or in regional languages. The local interaction 
between great traditions and local forms of worship and belief, 
based on village, caste, tribal, and linguistic differences, creates 
a range of ritual forms and mythology that varies widely 
throughout the country. Within this range of differences, 
Indian religions have demonstrated for many centuries a con- 
siderable degree of tolerance for alternate visions of the divine 
and of salvation. 

Religious tolerance in India finds expression in the defini- 
tion of the nation as a secular state, within which the govern- 
ment since independence has officially remained separate 
from any one religion, allowing all forms of belief equal status 
before the law. In practice it has proven difficult to divide reli- 
gious affiliation from public life. In states where the majority of 
the population embrace one religion, the boundary between 
government and religion becomes permeable; in Tamil Nadu, 



120 



Religious Life 



for example, the state government manages Hindu temples, 
while in Punjab an avowedly Sikh political party usually con- 
trols the state assembly. One of the most notable features of 
Indian politics, particularly since the 1960s, has been the steady 
growth of militant ideologies that see in only one religious tra- 
dition the way toward salvation and demand that public institu- 
tions conform to their interpretations of scripture. The vitality 
of religious fundamentalism and its impact on public life in the 
form of riots and religion-based political parties have been 
among the greatest challenges to Indian political institutions in 
the 1990s. 

The Roots of Indian Religion 

The Vedas and Polytheism 

Hinduism in India traces its source to the Vedas, ancient 
hymns composed and recited in Punjab as early as 1500 B.C. 
Three main collections of the Vedas — the Rig, Sama, and 
Yajur — consist of chants that were originally recited by priests 
while offering plant and animal sacrifices in sacred fires. A 
fourth collection, the Atharva Veda, contains a number of for- 
mulas for requirements as varied as medical cures and love 
magic. The majority of modern Hindus revere these hymns as 
sacred sounds passed down to humanity from the greatest 
antiquity and as the source of Hindu tradition. 

The vast majority of Vedic hymns are addressed to a pan- 
theon of deities who are attracted, generated, and nourished 
by the offerings into the sacred flames and the precisely 
chanted mantras (mystical formulas of invocation) based on 
the hymns. Each of these deities may appear to be the supreme 
god in his or her own hymns, but some gods stand out as most 
significant. Indra, god of the firmament and lord of the 
weather, is the supreme deity of the Vedas. Indra also is a god of 
war who, accompanied by a host of storm gods, uses thunder- 
bolts as weapons to slay the serpent demon Vritra (the name 
means storm cloud), thus releasing the rains for the earth. 
Agni, the god of fire, accepts the sacrificial offerings and trans- 
mits them to all the gods. Varuna passes judgment, lays down 
the law, and protects the cosmic order. Yama, the god of death, 
sends earthly dwellers signs of old age, sickness, and approach- 
ing mortality as exhortations to lead a moral life. Surya is the 
sun god, Chandra the moon god, Vayu the wind god, and Usha 
the dawn goddess. 



121 



India: A Country Study 

Some of the later hymns of the Rig Veda contain specula- 
tions that form the basis for much of Indian religious and 
philosophical thought. From one perspective, the universe 
originates through the evolution of an impersonal force mani- 
fested as male and female principles. Other hymns describe a 
personal creator, Prajapati, the Lord of creatures, from whom 
came the heavens and the earth and all the other gods. One 
hymn describes the universe as emerging from the sacrifice of a 
cosmic man (purusha) who was the source of all things but who 
was in turn offered into the fire by gods. Within the Vedic 
accounts of the origin of things, there is a tension between 
visions of the highest reality as an impersonal force, or as a cre- 
ator god, or as a group of gods with different jobs to do in the 
universe. Much of Hinduism tends to accept all these visions 
simultaneously, claiming that they are all valid as different fac- 
ets of a single truth, or ranks them as explanations with differ- 
ent levels of sophistication. It is possible, however, to follow 
only one of these explanations, such as believing in a single 
personal god while rejecting all others, and still claim to be fol- 
lowing the Vedas. In sum, Hinduism does not exist as a single 
belief system with one textual explanation of the origin of the 
universe or the nature of God, and a wide range of philoso- 
phies and practices can trace their beginnings somewhere in 
the hymns of the Vedas. 

By the sixth century B.C., the Vedic gods were in decline 
among the people, and few people care much for Indra, Agni, 
or Varuna in contemporary India. These gods might appear as 
background characters in myths and stories about more impor- 
tant deities, such as Shiva or Vishnu; in some Hindu temples, 
there also are small statues of Vedic deities. Sacrificial fire, 
which once accompanied major political activities, such as the 
crowning of kings or the conquest of territory, still forms the 
heart of household rituals for many Hindus, and some Brah- 
man (see Glossary) families pass down the skill of memorizing 
the hymns and make a living as professional reciters of the 
Vedas (see Domestic Worship, this ch.). One of the main lega- 
cies of Brahmanical sacrifice, seen even among traditions that 
later denied its usefulness, was a concentration on precise rit- 
ual actions and a belief in sacred sound as a powerful tool for 
manifesting the sacred in daily life. 

Karma and Liberation 

The Upanishads, originating as commentaries on the Vedas 



122 



First century B. C. Buddhist stupa at Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh 
Courtesy American Institute of Indian Studies 

between about 800 and 200 B.C., contain speculations on the 
meaning of existence that have greatly influenced Indian reli- 
gious traditions. Most important is the concept of atman (the 
human soul), which is an individual manifestation of brahman 
(see Glossary) . Atman is of the same nature as brahman, charac- 
terized either as an impersonal force or as God, and has as its 
goal the recognition of identity with brahman. This fusion is not 
possible, however, as long as the individual remains bound to 
the world of the flesh and desires. In fact, the deathless atman 
that is so bound will not join with brahman after the death of 
the body but will experience continuous rebirth. This funda- 
mental concept of the transmigration of atman, or reincarna- 
tion after death, lies at the heart of the religions emerging 
from India. 

Indian religious tradition sees karma (see Glossary) as the 
source of the problem of transmigration. While associated with 



123 



India: A Country Study 

physical form, for example, in a human body, beings experi- 
ence the universe through their senses and their minds and 
attach themselves to the people and things around them and 
constantly lose sight of their true existence as atman, which is of 
the same nature as brahman. As the time comes for the drop- 
ping of the body, the fruits of good and evil actions in the past 
remain with atman, clinging to it, causing a tendency to con- 
tinue experience in other existences after death. Good deeds 
in this life may lead to a happy rebirth in a better life, and evil 
deeds may lead to a lower existence, but eventually the conse- 
quences of past deeds will be worked out, and the individual 
will seek more experiences in a physical world. In this manner, 
the bound or ignorant atman wanders from life to life, in heav- 
ens and hells and in many different bodies. The universe may 
expand and be destroyed numerous times, but the bound 
atman vAW not achieve release. 

The true goal of atman is liberation, or release (moksha), 
from the limited world of experience and realization of one- 
ness with God or the cosmos. In order to achieve release, the 
individual must pursue a kind of discipline (yoga, a "tying," 
related to the English word yoke) that is appropriate to one's 
abilities and station in life. For most people, this goal means a 
course of action that keeps them rather closely tied to the 
world and its ways, including the enjoyment of love (kama), the 
attainment of wealth and power (artha), and the following of 
socially acceptable ethical principles (dharma — see Glossary). 
From this perspective, even manuals on sexual love, such as the 
Kama Sutra (Book of Love), or collections of ideas on politics 
and governance, such as the Arthashastra (Science of Material 
Gain), are part of a religious tradition that values action in the 
world as long as it is performed with understanding, a karma- 
yoga or selfless discipline of action in which every action is 
offered as a sacrifice to God. Some people, however, may be 
interested in breaking the cycle of rebirth in this life or soon 
thereafter. For them, a wide range of techniques has evolved 
over the thousands of years that gives Indian religion its great 
diversity. The discipline that involves physical positioning of 
the body (hatha-yoga), which is most commonly equated with 
yoga outside of India, sees the human body as a series of spiri- 
tual centers that can be awakened through meditation and 
exercise, leading eventually to a oneness with the universe. 
Tantrism is the belief in the Tantra (from the Sanskrit, context 
or continuum), a collection of texts that stress the usefulness of 



124 



Religious Life 



rituals, carried out with a strict discipline, as a means for attain- 
ing understanding and spiritual awakening. These rituals 
include chanting powerful mantras; meditating on compli- 
cated or auspicious diagrams (mandalas); and, for one school 
of advanced practitioners, deliberately violating social norms 
on food, drink, and sexual relations. 

A central aspect of all religious discipline, regardless of its 
emphasis, is the importance of the guru, or teacher. Indian 
religion may accept the sacredness of specific texts and rituals 
but stresses interpretation by a living practitioner who has per- 
sonal experience of liberation and can pass down successful 
techniques to devoted followers. In fact, since Vedic times, it 
has never been possible, and has rarely been desired, to unite 
all people in India under one concept of orthodoxy with a sin- 
gle authority that could be presented to everyone. Instead, 
there has been a tendency to accept religious innovation and 
diversity as the natural result of personal experience by succes- 
sive generations of gurus, who have tailored their messages to 
particular times, places, and peoples, and then passed down 
their knowledge to lines of disciples and social groups. As a 
result, Indian religion is a mass of ancient and modern tradi- 
tions, some always preserved and some constantly changing, 
and the individual is relatively free to stress in his or her life the 
beliefs and religious behaviors that seem most effective on the 
path to deliverance. 

The Monastic Path 

By about 500 B.C., some teachers had moved so far down the 
path of liberation that they no longer viewed the standard per- 
ception of life in the social world as valid for the dedicated spir- 
itual devotee. They formed communities of religious 
renunciants (shramanas) who withdrew from the world and 
evolved a full-time monastic discipline. The most successful of 
these early communities, the Jains (or, in Sanskrit, Jaina) and 
the Buddhists, rejected the value of the Vedas and created inde- 
pendent textual traditions based on the words and examples of 
their early teachers, eventually evolving entirely new ways for 
interacting with the lay community. 

Jainism 

The oldest continuous monastic tradition in India is Jainism, 
the path of the Jinas, or victors. This tradition is traced to Var- 



125 



India: A Country Study 

dhamana Mahavira (The Great Hero; ca. 599-527 B.C.), the 
twenty-fourth and last of the Tirthankaras (Sanskrit for ford- 
makers). According to legend, Mahavira was born to a ruling 
family in the town of Vaishali, located in the modern state of 
Bihar. At the age of thirty, he renounced his wealthy life and 
devoted himself to fasting and self-mortification in order to 
purify his consciousness and discover the meaning of exist- 
ence. He never again dwelt in a house, owned property, or 
wore clothing of any sort. Following the example of the teacher 
Parshvanatha (ninth century B.C.), he attained enlightenment 
and spent the rest of his life meditating and teaching a dedi- 
cated group of disciples who formed a monastic order follow- 
ing rules he laid down. His life's work complete, he entered a 
final fast and deliberately died of starvation. 

The ancient belief system of the Jains rests on a concrete 
understanding of the working of karma, its effects on the living 
soul (jiva), and the conditions for extinguishing action and the 
soul's release. According to the Jain view, the soul is a living 
substance that combines with various kinds of nonliving matter 
and through action accumulates particles of matter that adhere 
to it and determine its fate. Most of the matter perceptible to 
human senses, including all animals and plants, is attached in 
various degrees to living souls and is in this sense alive. Any 
action has consequences that necessarily follow the embodied 
soul, but the worst accumulations of matter come from vio- 
lence against other living beings. The ultimate Jain discipline, 
therefore, rests on complete inactivity and absolute nonvio- 
lence (ahimsa) against any living beings. Some Jain monks and 
nuns wear face masks to avoid accidently inhaling small organ- 
isms, and all practicing believers try to remain vegetarians. 
Extreme renunciation, including the refusal of all food, lies at 
the heart of a discipline that purges the mind and body of all 
desires and actions and, in the process, burns off the conse- 
quences of actions performed in the past. In this sense, Jain 
renunciants may recognize or revere deities, but they do not 
view the Vedas as sacred texts and instead concentrate on the 
atheistic, individual quest for purification and removal of 
karma. The final goal is the extinguishing of self, a "blowing 
out" (nirvana) of the individual self. 

By the first century A.D., the Jain community evolved into 
two main divisions based on monastic discipline: the Digam- 
bara or "sky-clad" monks who wear no clothes, own nothing, 
and collect donated food in their hands; and the Svetambara 



126 



The mid-nineteenth-century Paresnath Jain Temple, Calcutta 
Courtesy Bernice Huffman Collection, Library of Congress 

or "white-clad" monks and nuns who wear white robes and 
carry bowls for donated food. The Digambara do not accept 
the possibility of women achieving liberation, while the Svetam- 
bara do. Western and southern India have been Jain strong- 
holds for many centuries; laypersons have typically formed 
minority communities concentrated primarily in urban areas 
and in mercantile occupations. In the mid-1990s, there were 
about 7 million Jains, the majority of whom live in the states of 
Maharashtra (mostly the city of Bombay, or Mumbai in 
Marathi), Rajasthan, and Gujarat (see Structure and Dynamics, 
ch. 2). Karnataka, traditionally a stronghold of Digambaras, 
has a sizable Jain community. 

The Jain laity engage in a number of ritual activities that 
resemble those of the Hindus around them (see The Ceremo- 
nies of Hinduism, this ch.). Special shrines in residences or in 
public temples include images of the Tirthankaras, who are not 



127 



India: A Country Study 



worshiped but remembered and revered; other shrines house 
the gods who are more properly invoked to intercede with 
worldly problems. Daily rituals may include meditation and 
bathing; bathing the images; offering food, flowers, and 
lighted lamps for the images; and reciting mantras in 
Ardhamagadhi, an ancient language of northeast India related 
to Sanskrit. Many Jain laity engage in sacramental ceremonies 
during life-cycle rituals, such as the first taking of solid food, 
marriage, and death, resembling those enacted by Hindus. 
Jains may also worship local gods and participate in local 
Hindu or Muslim celebrations without compromising their 
fundamental devotion to the path of the Jinas. The most 
important festivals of Jainism celebrate the five major events in 
the life of Mahavira: conception, birth, renunciation, enlight- 
enment, and final release at death. 

At a number of pilgrimage sites associated with great teach- 
ers of Jainism, the gifts of wealthy donors made possible the 
building of architectural wonders. Shatrunjaya Hills (Siddha- 
giri) in Gujarat is a major Svetambara site, an entire city of 
about 3,500 temples. Mount Abu in Rajasthan, with one Digam- 
bara and five Svetambara temples, is the site of some of India's 
greatest architecture, dating from the eleventh through thir- 
teenth centuries A.D. In Karnataka, on the hill of Sravana Bel- 
gola, stands the monolithic seventeen-meter-high statue of the 
naked Bhagwan Bahubali (Gomateshvara), the first person in 
the world believed by the faithful to have attained enlighten- 
ment, so deep in meditation that vines are growing around his 
legs. At this site every twelve years, a major concourse of Jain 
ascetics and laity participate in a purification ceremony in 
which the statue is anointed from head to toe. Carved in 981, 
the statue is considered the holiest Jain shrine. In addition to 
its lavish patronage of shrines, the Jain community, with its 
long scriptural tradition and wealth gained from trade, has 
always been known for its philanthropy and especially for its 
support of education and learning. Prestigious Jain schools are 
located in most major cities. The largest concentrations of Jains 
are in Maharashtra (more than 965,000) and Rajasthan (nearly 
563,000), with sizable numbers also in Gujarat and Madhya 
Pradesh. 

Buddhism 

Buddhism began with the life of Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 
563-483 B.C.), a prince from the small Shakya Kingdom 



128 



Itinerant Jain nuns along a road in Rajasthan 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



located in the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal. Brought up 
in luxury, the prince abandoned his home and wandered forth 
as a religious beggar, searching for the meaning of existence. 
The stories of his search presuppose the Jain tradition, as 
Gautama was for a time a practitioner of intense austerity, at 
one point almost starving himself to death. He decided, how- 
ever, that self-torture weakened his mind while failing to 
advance him to enlightenment and therefore turned to a 
milder style of renunciation and concentrated on advanced 
meditation techniques. Eventually, under a tree in the forests 
of Gaya (in modern Bihar), he resolved to stir no farther until 
he had solved the mystery of existence. Breaking through the 
final barriers, he achieved the knowledge that he later 
expressed as the Four Noble Truths: all of life is suffering; the 
cause of suffering is desire; the end of desire leads to the end of 
suffering; and the means to end desire is a path of discipline 



129 



India: A Country Study 

and meditation. Gautama was now the Buddha, or the awak- 
ened one, and he spent the remainder of his life traveling 
about northeast India converting large numbers of disciples. At 
the age of eighty, the Buddha achieved his final passing away 
(parinirvana) and died, leaving a thriving monastic order and a 
dedicated lay community to continue his work. 

By the third century B.C., the still-young religion based on 
the Buddha's teachings was being spread throughout South 
Asia through the agency of the Mauryan Empire (ca. 326-184 
B.C.; see The Mauryan Empire, ch. 1). By the seventh century 
A.D., having spread throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia, 
Buddhism probably had the largest religious following in the 
world. 

For centuries Indian royalty and merchants patronized Bud- 
dhist monasteries and raised beautiful, hemispherical stone 
structures called stupas over the relics of the Buddha in rever- 
ence to his memory. Since the 1840s, archaeology has revealed 
the huge impact of Buddhist art, iconography, and architecture 
in India. The monastery complex at Nalanda in Bihar, in ruins 
in 1993, was a world center for Buddhist philosophy and reli- 
gion until the thirteenth century. But by the thirteenth cen- 
tury, when Turkic invaders destroyed the remaining 
monasteries on the plains, Buddhism as an organized religion 
had practically disappeared from India. It survived only in Bhu- 
tan and Sikkim, both of which were then independent Hima- 
layan kingdoms; among tribal groups in the mountains of 
northeast India; and in Sri Lanka. The reasons for this disap- 
pearance are unclear, and they are many: shifts in royal patron- 
age from Buddhist to Hindu religious institutions; a constant 
intellectual struggle with dynamic Hindu intellectual schools, 
which eventually triumphed; and slow adoption of popular reli- 
gious forms by Buddhists while Hindu monastic communities 
grew up with the same style of discipline as the Buddhists, lead- 
ing to the slow but steady amalgamation of ideas and trends in 
the two religions. 

Buddhism began a steady and dramatic comeback in India 
during the early twentieth century, spurred on originally by a 
combination of European antiquarian and philosophical inter- 
est and the dedicated activities of a few Indian devotees. The 
foundation of the Mahabodhi Society (Society of Great 
Enlightenment) in 1891, originally as a force to wrest control 
of the Buddhist shrine at Gaya from the hands of Hindu man- 



130 



Religious Life 



agers, gave a large stimulus to the popularization of Buddhist 
philosophy and the importance of the religion in India's past. 

A major breakthrough occurred in 1956 after some thirty 
years of Untouchable, or Dalit (see Glossary), agitation when 
Bhimrao Ramji (B.R.) Ambedkar, leader of the Untouchable 
wing within the Congress (see Glossary), announced that he 
was converting to Buddhism as a way to escape from the imped- 
iments of the Hindu caste system (see Varna, Caste, and Other 
Divisions, ch. 5). He brought with him masses of Untouch- 
ables — also known as Harijans (see Glossary) or Dalits — and 
members of Scheduled Castes (see Glossary), who mostly came 
from Maharashtra and border areas of neighboring states and 
from the Agra area in Uttar Pradesh. By the early 1990s, there 
were more than 5 million Buddhists in Maharashtra, or 79 per- 
cent of the entire Buddhist community in India, almost all 
recent converts from low castes. When added to longtime Bud- 
dhist populations in hill areas of northeast India (West Bengal, 
Assam, Sikkim, Mizoram, and Tripura) and high Himalayan 
valleys (Ladakh District in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal 
Pradesh, and northern Uttar Pradesh), and to the influx of 
Tibetan Buddhist refugees who fled from Tibet with the Dalai 
Lama in 1959 and thereafter, the recent converts raised the 
number of Buddhists in India to 6.4 million by 1991. This was a 
35.9 percent increase since 1981 and made Buddhism the fifth 
largest religious group in the country. 

The forms of Buddhism practiced by Himalayan communi- 
ties and Tibetan refugees are part of the Vajrayana, or "Way of 
the Lightning Bolt," that developed after the seventh century 
A.D. as part of Mahayana (Great Path) Buddhism. Although 
retaining the fundamental importance of individual spiritual 
advancement, the Vajrayana stresses the intercession of bodhi- 
sattvas, or enlightened beings, who remain in this world to aid 
others on the path. Until the twentieth century, the Himalayan 
kingdoms supported a hierarchy in which Buddhist monks, 
some identified from birth as bodhisattvas, occupied the high- 
est positions in society. 

Most other Buddhists in India follow Theravada Buddhism, 
the "Doctrine of the Elders," which traces its origin through Sri 
Lankan and Burmese traditions to scriptures in the Pali lan- 
guage, a Sanskritic dialect in eastern India. Although replete 
with miraculous events and legends, these scriptures stress a 
more human Buddha and a democratic path toward enlighten- 
ment for everyone. Ambedkar's plan for the expanding Bud- 



131 



India: A Country Study 

dhist congregation in India visualized Buddhist monks and 
nuns developing themselves through service to others. Convert 
communities, by embracing Buddhism, have embarked on 
social transformations, including a decline in alcoholism, a 
simplification of marriage ceremonies and abolition of ruinous 
marriage expenses, a greater emphasis on education, and a 
heightened sense of identity and self-worth. 

The Tradition of the Enlightened Master 

A number of avowedly Hindu monastic communities have 
grown up over time and adopted some of the characteristics 
associated with early Buddhism and Jainism, while remaining 
dedicated to the Hindu philosophical traditions. One of the 
oldest and most respected of the Hindu orders traces its origin 
to the teacher Shankara (788-820), believed by many devotees 
to have lived hundreds of years earlier. Shankara's philosophy 
is a primary source of Vedanta, or the "End of the Veda," the 
final commentary on revealed truth, which is one of the most 
influential trends in modern Hinduism. His interpretation of 
the Upanishads portrays brahman as absolutely one and without 
qualities. The phenomenal world is illusion (maya), which the 
embodied soul must transcend in order to achieve oneness 
with brahman. As a wandering monk, Shankara traveled 
throughout India, combating Buddhist atheism and founding 
five seats of learning at Badrinath (Uttar Pradesh), Dwaraka 
(Gujarat), Puri (Orissa), Sringeri (Karnataka), and Kan- 
chipuram (Tamil Nadu). In the 1990s, those seats are still held 
by successors to Shankara's philosophy (Shankara Acharyas), 
who head an order of orange-clad monks that is highly 
respected by the Hindu community throughout India. Activi- 
ties of the acharyas, including their periodic trips away from 
their home monasteries to visit and preach to devotees, receive 
exposure in regional and national media. Their conservative 
viewpoints and pronouncements on a variety of topics, 
although not binding on most believers, attract considerable 
public attention. 

The initiation of a renunciant usually depends on the judg- 
ment of an acharya who determines whether a candidate is ded- 
icated and prepared or not; he then gives to the disciple 
training and instructions including the initiate's own secret for- 
mula or mantra. After initiation, the disciple may remain with 
his teacher or in a monastery for an indefinite period or may 
wander forth in a variety of careers. The Ramanandi order in 



132 



Religious Life 



North India, for example, includes holy men (sadhus) who 
practice ascetic disciplines, militant members of fortified tem- 
ples, and priests in charge of temple administration and ritual. 

There are other orders of renunciants who lead still more 
austere existences, including naked ascetics who wander beg- 
ging for their food and assemble for spectacular parades at 
major festivals. A few dedicated seekers still withdraw to the 
fastness of the Himalayas or other remote spots and work on 
their meditation and yoga in total obscurity. Others beg in pop- 
ulated areas, sometimes engaging in fierce austerities such as 
piercing their bodies with pins and knives. They are a reminder 
to all people that the path of renunciation waits for anyone 
who has the dedication and the courage to leave the world 
behind. 

Another kind of renunciation appears in the cult of Sai 
Baba, who achieved national and international fame in the 
twentieth century. The first person known by this name was a 
holy man — Sai Baba (died 1918) — who appeared in 1872 in 
Maharashtra and lived a humble life that blended meditation 
and devotional techniques from a variety of sources. This saint 
has a small but dedicated following throughout India. A later 
incarnation was Satya Sai Baba (satya means true), born in 
1926 in Andhra Pradesh. At age thirteen, he experienced the 
first of several seizures that resulted in a changed personality 
and intense devotional activity, leading to his statement that he 
is the second incarnation of Sai Baba. By 1950 he had set up a 
retreat at Puttaparti in what later became Andhra Pradesh and 
was accepting disciples. His fame spread along with numerous 
apocryphal stories of his ability to perform miracles, including 
the manifestation of sacred ash and, according to some 
accounts, watches or other objects, from thin air or from his 
own body. The cult has expanded to include publishing, social 
service, and education institutions and includes an interna- 
tional association of thousands of believers. Devotion to Satya 
Sai Baba does not preclude attachment to other religious 
observances but concentrates instead on worship and venera- 
tion of the holy man himself, often in the form of a photo- 
graph. Thousands of pilgrims have traveled to his retreat 
annually to participate in group activities, obtain mementos, 
and perhaps a view of the teacher himself. 

The Worship of Personal Gods 

For the vast majority of Hindus, the most important religious 



133 



India: A Country Study 

path is bhakti (devotion) to personal gods. There are a wide 
variety of gods to choose from, and although sectarian adher- 
ence to particular deities is often strong, there is a widespread 
acceptance of choice in the desired god (ishta devata) as the 
most appropriate focus for any particular person. Most devo- 
tees are therefore polytheists, worshiping all or part of the vast 
pantheon of deities, some of whom have come down from 
Vedic times. In practice, a worshiper tends to concentrate 
prayers on one deity or on a small group of deities with whom 
there is a close personal relationship. 

Puja (worship) of the gods consists of a range of ritual offer- 
ings and prayers typically performed either daily or on special 
days before an image of the deity, which may be in the form of 
a person or a symbol of the sacred presence. In its more devel- 
oped forms, puja consists of a series of ritual stages beginning 
with personal purification and invocation of the god, followed 
by offerings of flowers, food, or other objects such as clothing, 
accompanied by fervent prayers. Some dedicated worshipers 
perform these ceremonies daily at their home shrines; others 
travel to one or more temples to perform puja, alone or with 
the aid of temple priests who receive offerings and present 
these offerings to the gods. The gifts given to the gods become 
sacred through contact with their images or with their shrines, 
and may be received and used by worshipers as the grace (pras- 
add) of the divine. Sacred ash or saffron powder, for example, 
is often distributed after puja and smeared on the foreheads of 
devotees. In the absence of any of these ritual objects, however, 
puja may take the form of a simple prayer sent toward the 
image of the divine, and it is common to see people stop for a 
moment before roadside shrines to fold their hands and offer 
short invocations to the gods. 

Since at least the seventh century A.D., the devotional path 
has spread from the south throughout India through the liter- 
ary and musical activities of saints who have been some of the 
most important representatives of regional languages and tra- 
ditions. The hymns of these saints and their successors, mostly 
in vernacular forms, are memorized and performed at all levels 
of society. Every state in India has its own bhakti tradition and 
poets who are studied and revered. In Tamil Nadu, groups 
called Nayanmars (devotees of Shiva) and Alvars (devotees of 
Vishnu) were composing beautiful poetry in the Tamil lan- 
guage as early as the sixth century. In Bengal one of the great- 
est poets was Chaitanya (1485-1536), who spent much of his 



134 



A sadhu with sacred rudraksha 
beads, Varanasi. The writing on 
his shawl says Om Ram, a 
phrase invoking the name 
of the Lord Ram. 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



life in a state of mystical ecstasy. One of the greatest North 
Indian saints was Kabir (ca. 1440-1518), a common leather- 
worker who stressed faith in God without devotion to images, 
rituals, or scriptures. Among female poets, Princess Mirabai 
(ca. 1498-1546) from Rajasthan stands out as one whose love 
for Krishna was so intense that she suffered persecution for her 
public singing and dancing for the lord. 

A recurring motif that emerges from the poetry and the 
hagiographies of these saints is the equality of all men and 
women before God and the ability of people from all castes and 
occupations to find their way to union with God if they have 
enough faith and devotion. In this sense, the bhakti tradition 
serves as one of the equalizing forces in Indian society and cul- 
ture. 

Vishnu 

As one of the most important gods in the Hindu pantheon, 
Vishnu is surrounded by a number of extremely popular and 
well-known stories and is the focus of a number of sects 
devoted entirely to his worship. Vishnu contains a number of 
personalities, often represented as ten major descents (avatars) 
in which the god has taken on physical forms in order to save 
earthly creatures from destruction. In one story, the earth was 



135 



India: A Country Study 

drowning in a huge flood, so to save it Vishnu took on the body 
of a giant turtle and lifted the earth on his back out of the 
waters. A tale found in the Vedas describes a demon who could 
not be conquered. Responding to the pleas of the gods, Vishnu 
appeared before the demon as a dwarf. The demon, in a classic 
instance of pride, underestimated this dwarf and granted him 
as much of the world as he could tread in three steps. Vishnu 
then assumed his universal form and in three strides spanned 
the entire universe and beyond, crushing the demon in the 
process. 

The incarnation of Vishnu known to almost everyone in 
India is his life as Ram (Rama in Sanskrit), a prince from the 
ancient north Indian kingdom of Ayodhya, in the cycle of sto- 
ries known as the Ramayana (The Travels of Ram). On one 
level, this is a classic adventure story, as Ram is exiled from the 
kingdom and has to wander in the forests of southern India 
with his beautiful wife Sita and his loyal younger brother Lak- 
shman. After many adventures, during which Ram befriends 
the king of the monkey kingdom and joins forces with the 
great monkey hero Hanuman, the demon king Ravana kidnaps 
Sita and takes her to his fortress on the island of Lanka (mod- 
ern Sri Lanka). A huge war then ensues, as Ram with his ani- 
mal allies attacks the demons, destroys them all, and returns in 
triumph to North India to occupy his lawful throne. Village sto- 
rytellers, street theater players, the movies, and the national 
television network all have their versions of this story. In many 
parts of the country, but especially in North India, the annual 
festival of Dussehra celebrates Ram's adventures and his final 
triumph and includes the public burning of huge effigies of 
Ravana at the end of several days of parties. Everyone knows 
that Ram is really Vishnu, who came down to rid the earth of 
the demons and set up an ideal kingdom of righteousness — 
Ram Raj — which stands as an ideal in contemporary India. Sita 
is in reality his consort, the goddess Lakshmi, the ideal of femi- 
nine beauty and devotion to her husband. Lakshmi, also 
known as Shri, eventually became the goddess of fortune, sur- 
plus, and happiness. Hanuman, as the faithful sidekick with 
great physical and magical powers, is one of the most beloved 
images in the Hindu pantheon with temples of his own 
throughout the country. 

Another widely known incarnation is Krishna. In the Maha- 
bharata (Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata), the 
gigantic, multivolume epic of ancient North Indian kingdoms, 



136 



Religious Life 



Krishna appears as the ruler of one of the many states allied 
either with the heroic Pandava brothers or with their treacher- 
ous cousins, the Kauravas. Bharata was an ancient king whose 
achievements are celebrated in the Mahabharata and from 
whose name derives one of the names for modern India, that is 
Bharat. During the final battle, Krishna serves as charioteer for 
the hero Arjuna, and before the fighting starts he bolsters 
Arjuna's faltering will to fight against his kin. Krishna reveals 
himself as Vishnu, the supreme godhead, who has set up the 
entire conflict to cleanse the earth of evildoers according to his 
inscrutable will. This section of the epic, the Bhagavad Gita, or 
Song of the Lord, is one of the great jewels of world religious 
literature and of central importance in modern Hinduism. 
One of its main themes is karma-yoga, or selfless discipline in 
offering all of one's allotted tasks in life as a devotion to God 
and without attachment to consequences. The true reality is 
the soul that neither slays nor is slain and that can rejoin God 
through selfless dedication and through Krishna's saving grace. 

A completely different cycle of stories portrays Krishna as a 
young cowherd, growing up in the country after he was saved 
from an evil uncle who coveted his kingdom. In this incarna- 
tion, Krishna often appears as a happy, roly-poly infant, well 
known for his pranks and thefts of butter. Although his ene- 
mies send evil agents to destroy him, the baby miraculously sur- 
vives their attacks and kills his demonic assailants. Later, as he 
grows into an adolescent, he continues to perform miracles 
such as saving the cowherds and their flocks from a dangerous 
storm by holding up a mountain over their heads until the 
weather clears. His most striking exploits, however, are his 
affairs as a young adult with the gopis (cowherding maidens), 
all of whom are in love with him because of his good looks and 
talent with the flute. 

These explicitly sexual activities, including stealing the 
clothes of the maidens while they are bathing, are the basis for 
a wide range of poetry and songs to Krishna as a lover; the dev- 
otee of the god takes on a female role and directs toward the 
beloved lord the heartfelt longing for union with the divine. 
Krishna's relationship with Radha, his favorite among the gopis, 
has served as a model for male and female love in a variety of 
art forms, and since the sixteenth century appears prominently 
as a motif in North Indian paintings. Unlike many other dei- 
ties, who are depicted as very fair in color, Krishna appears in 
all these adventures as a dark lord, either black or blue in color. 



137 



India: A Country Study 

In this sense, he is a figure who constantly overturns accepted 
conventions of order, hierarchy, and propriety, and introduces 
a playful and mischievous aspect of a god who hides from his 
worshipers but saves them in the end. The festival of Holi at the 
spring equinox, in which people of all backgrounds play in the 
streets and squirt each other with colored water, is associated 
with Krishna. 

In iconography Vishnu may appear as any of his ten incarna- 
tions but often stands in sculpture as a princely male with four 
arms that bear a club, discus, conch, and lotus flower. He may 
also appear lying on his back on the thousand-headed king of 
the serpents, Shesha-Naga, in the milk ocean at the center of 
time, with his feet massaged by Lakshmi, and with a lotus grow- 
ing from his navel giving birth to the god Brahma, a 
four-headed representation of the creative principle. Vishnu in 
this representation is the ultimate source of the universe that 
he causes to expand and contract at regular cosmic intervals 
measuring millions of years. On a more concrete level, Vishnu 
may become incarnate at any moment on earth in order to 
continue to bring sentient creatures back to himself, and a 
number of great religious teachers (including, for example, 
Chaitanya in Bengal) are identified by their followers as incar- 
nations of Vishnu. 

Shiva 

The god Shiva is the other great figure in the modern pan- 
theon. In contrast to the regal attributes of Vishnu, Shiva is a 
figure of renunciation. A favorite image portrays him as an 
ascetic, performing meditation alone in the fastness of the 
Himalayas. There he sits on a tiger skin, clad only in a loin- 
cloth, covered with sacred ash that gives his skin a gray color. 
His trident is stuck into the ground next to him. Around his 
neck is a snake. From his matted hair, tied in a topknot, the 
river Ganga (Ganges) descends to the earth. His neck is blue, a 
reminder of the time he drank the poison that emerged while 
gods and demons competed to churn the milk ocean. Shiva 
often appears in this image as an antisocial being, who once 
burned up Kama, the god of love, with a glance. But behind 
this image is the cosmic lord who, through the very power of 
his meditating consciousness, expands the entire universe and 
all beings in it. Although he appears to be hard to attain, in 
reality Shiva is a loving deity who saves those devotees who are 
wholeheartedly dedicated to him. 



138 



Religious Life 



The bhakti literature of South India, where Shiva has long 
been important, describes the numerous instances of 
pure-hearted devotion to the beautiful lord and the final reve- 
lation of himself as Shiva after testing his devotees. Shiva often 
appears on earth in disguise, perhaps as a wandering Brahman 
priest, to challenge the charity or belief of a suffering servant, 
only to appear eventually in his true nature. Many of these 
divine plays are connected directly with specific people and 
specific sites, and almost every ancient Shiva temple can claim 
a famous poem or a famous miracle in its history. The hun- 
dreds of medieval temples in Tamil Nadu, almost all dedicated 
to Shiva, contain sculptured panels depicting the god in a vari- 
ety of guises: Bhikshatana, the begging lord; Bhairava, a horri- 
ble, destructive image; or Nataraja, the lord of the dance, 
beating a drum that keeps time while he manifests the uni- 
verse. 

Because he withholds his sexual urges and controls them, 
Shiva is able to transmute sexual energy into creative power, by 
generating intense heat. It is, in fact, the heat generated from 
discipline and austerity (tapas) that is seen as the source for the 
generative power of all renunciants, and in this sense Shiva is 
often connected with wandering orders of monks in modern 
India. For the average worshiper, the sexual power of Shiva is 
seen in the most common image that represents him, the lin- 
gam. This is typically a cylindrical stone several feet tall, with a 
rounded top, standing in a circular base. On one level, this is 
the most basic image of divinity, providing a focus for worship 
with a minimum of artistic embellishment, attempting to repre- 
sent the infinite. The addition of carved anatomical details on 
many lingams, however, leaves no doubt for the worshiper that 
this is an erect male sexual organ, showing the procreative 
power of God at the origin of all things. The concept of reality 
as the complex interplay of opposite principles, male and 
female, thus finds its highest form in the mythology of Shiva 
and his consort Parvati (also known as Shakti, Kali, or Durga), 
the daughter of the mountains. This most controlled deity, the 
meditating Shiva, then has still another form, as the erotic 
lover of Parvati, embracing her passionately. 

Shiva and Parvati have two sons, who have entire cycles of 
myths and legends and bhakti cults in their own right. One son 
is called variously Karttikeya (identified with the planet Mars) 
or Skanda (the god of war or Subrahmanya) . He is extremely 
handsome, carries a spear, and rides a peacock. According to 



139 



India: A Country Study 

some traditions, he emerged motherless from Shiva when the 
gods needed a great warrior to conquer an indestructible 
demon. In southern India, where he is called Murugan, he is a 
lord of mountain places and a great friend of those who dedi- 
cate themselves to him. Some devotees vow to carry on their 
shoulders specially carved objects of wood for a determined 
number of weeks, never putting them down during that time. 
Others may go further, and insert knives or long pins into their 
bodies for extended periods. 

Another son of Shiva and Parvati is Ganesh, or Ganapati, the 
Lord of the Ganas (the hosts of Shiva), who has a male 
human's body with four arms and the head of an elephant. 
One myth claims that he originated directly from Parvati's 
body and entered into a quarrel with Shiva, who cut off his 
human head and replaced it later with the head of the first ani- 
mal he found, which happened to be an elephant. For most 
worshipers, Ganesh is the first deity invoked during any cere- 
mony because he is the god of wisdom and remover of obsta- 
cles. People worship Ganesh when beginning anything, for 
example, at the start of a trip or the first day of the new school 
year. He is often pictured next to his mount, the rat, symbol of 
the ability to get in anywhere. Ganesh is therefore a clever fig- 
ure, a trickster in many stories, who presents a benevolent and 
friendly image to those worshipers who placate him. His image 
is perhaps the most widespread and public in India, visible in 
streets and transportation terminals everywhere. The antics of 
Ganesh and Karttikeya and the interactions of Shiva and Par- 
vati have generated a series of entertaining myths of Shiva as a 
henpecked husband, who would prefer to keep meditating but 
instead is drawn into family problems, providing a series of 
morality tales in households throughout India. 

Brahma and the Hindu Trinity 

It is often said that the Hindu pantheon has three gods at its 
head: Brahma, the creator of the universe; Vishnu, the pre- 
server of life; and Shiva, the destroyer of ignorance. Brahma is 
a representation of the impersonal brahman in a human form, 
usually with four faces facing the cardinal directions and four 
arms (see Karma and Liberation, this ch.). In reality, Brahma 
receives little devotion from worshipers, who may mention him 
in passing while giving their attention to the other main gods. 
There are few temples in India dedicated to him; instead, his 
image may stand in niches on the walls of temples built for 



140 



Lavishly decorated mid-seventh- 
century A.D. Parasuramesvar 
temple, dedicated to Shiva, 
Bhubaneshwar, Orissa 
Courtesy Bernice Huffman 
Collection, Library of Congress 




other deities. Religious stories usually place Brahma as an inter- 
mediate authority who cannot handle a problem and passes it 
on to either Vishnu or Shiva. The concept of the trinity 
(trimurti), expressed in beautiful art works or invoked even by 
believers, is in practice a philosophical construct that unites all 
deistic traditions within Hinduism into one overarching sym- 
bol. 

The Goddess 

Philosophical musings as far back as the Rig Veda contem- 
plated the universe as the result of an interplay between the 
male principle (purusha) , the prime source of generative 
power but quiescent, and a female principle that came to be 
known as prakriti, an active principle that manifests reality, or 
power (shakti), at work in the world. On a philosophical level, 
this female principle ultimately rests in the oneness of the 
male, but on a practical level it is the female that is most signifi- 
cant in the world. The vast array of iconography and mythology 
that surround the gods such as Vishnu and Shiva is a backdrop 
for the worship of their female consorts, and the male deities 
fade into the background. Thus it is that the divine is often 
female in India. 

Vishnu's consort, Lakshmi, has a number of well-known 
incarnations that are the center of cults in their own right. In 



141 



India: A Country Study 

the Ramayana, for example, female characters are responsible 
for most of the important events, and the dutiful Sita, who 
resists the advances of lustful Ravana, is a much beloved figure 
of devotion. Lakshmi receives direct worship along with Ram 
during the big national festival of Dipavali (Diwali), celebrated 
with massive fireworks demonstrations, when people pray for 
success and wealth during the coming year. The Mahabharata is 
equally packed with tales of male and female relationships in 
which women hold their own, and the beautiful Draupadi, wife 
of the five Pandava heroes, has her own cult in scattered loca- 
tions throughout India. 

Parvati, in a variety of forms, is the most common focus of 
devotion in India. She presents two main facets to her worship- 
ers: a benign and accepting personality that provides assistance 
and a powerful and dangerous personality that must be pla- 
cated. The benign vision exists in many temples to Shiva 
throughout the country, where the goddess has her own shrine 
that is in practice the most frequented site of heartfelt devo- 
tion. During annual festivals in which the god and goddess 
emerge from their shrines and travel in processions, it is often 
the goddess who is most eagerly anticipated. In North India, 
for example, life-like statues of the loving goddess Kali, who is 
ultimately a manifestation of Parvati, are carried through huge 
crowds that line village and city streets. In South India, where 
gigantic temples are the physical and social centers of town life, 
the shrines and their annual festivals are often known by the 
names of their goddesses. One of the more famous is the six- 
teenth- and seventeenth-century Minakshi Temple in Madurai, 
Tamil Nadu. The temple is named after the "fish-eyed goddess" 
Minakshi, described in myths as a dark queen born with three 
breasts, who set out to conquer the universe. After overrunning 
the world and vanquishing the gods, Minakshi finally met Shiva 
and, when her third breast disappeared, accepted him as her 
lord. This motif of physical power and energy appears in many 
stories where the goddess is a warrior or conqueror of demons 
who in the end joins with Shiva. 

Alternative visions, however, portray a goddess on the loose, 
with the potential for causing havoc in the world unless 
appeased. The goddess Durga is a great warrior who carries 
swords and a shield, rides a tiger, and destroys demons when 
the gods prove incapable; in this incarnation, she never sub- 
mits, but remains capable of terrible deeds of war. The goddess 
Kali often appears as an even more horrific vision of the divine, 



142 



Religious Life 



with garlands of human skulls around her neck and a severed 
head in her hand; her bloody tongue hangs from her mouth, 
and the weapons in her arms drip gore. This image attempts to 
capture the destructive capacity of the divine, the suffering in 
the world, and the ultimate return of all things to the goddess 
at death. 

In many small shrines throughout India, in marked contrast 
to the large and ornate temples dominated by Brahmanical 
principles and the philosophy of nonviolence, the female divin- 
ity receives regular gifts of blood sacrifices, usually chickens 
and goats. In addition, the goddess may manifest herself as the 
bearer of a number of diseases. The goddess of smallpox, 
known as Shitala in North India and Mariamman in South 
India, remains a feared and worshiped figure even after the 
official elimination of the disease, for she is still capable of 
afflicting people with a number of fevers and poxes. Many 
more localized forms of goddesses, known by different names 
in different regions, are the focus for prayers and vows that 
lead worshipers to undertake acts of austerity and pilgrimages 
in return for favors. 

Local Deities 

Along many paths in the countryside, and in some urban 
neighborhoods, there are sacred spots at the base of trees, or 
small stones set in niches, or simply made statues with flowers 
or a small flame burning in front of them. These are shrines 
for deities who are locally honored for protecting the people 
from harm caused by natural disasters or evil influences. Wor- 
shipers often portray these protectors as warriors, and, in some 
cases, they may be traced back to great human fighters who 
died for their village and later became immortalized. In South 
India, there are thousands of hero stones, simple representa- 
tions of warriors on slabs of stone, found in and around agri- 
cultural settlements, in memory of nameless local fighters who 
may have died while protecting their communities hundreds of 
years ago. At one time, these stones may have received regular 
signs of devotion, but they are mostly ignored in contemporary 
India. In the fields on the outskirts of many villages, there are 
large, multicolored, terra-cotta figures of warriors with raised 
swords or figures of war horses; these are open-air shrines of 
the god Aiyanar, who serves as the village protector and who 
has very few connections with the great tradition of Hinduism. 



143 



India: A Country Study 



Local deities may begin to attract the attention of worshipers 
from a wide geographical area, which may include many vil- 
lages or neighborhoods, or from a large percentage of the 
members of particular castes, who come to the deity seeking 
protection or boons. These deities have their own shrines, 
which may be simple, independent enclosures with pillared 
halls or may stand as separate establishments attached to tem- 
ples of Shiva, Vishnu, or any other great god. Deities at this 
level attract expressive and ecstatic forms of worship and tend 
to possess special devotees on a regular basis or enter into their 
believers during festivals. People who are possessed by the god 
may speak to their families and friends concerning important 
personal or social problems, predicting the future or clarifying 
mysteries. These local gods often expect offerings of animals, 
usually goats or chickens, which are killed in the vicinity of the 
shrines and then consumed in communal meals by families 
and friends. 

In the twentieth century, there has been an increase in the 
number of new, regional gods attracting worshipers from many 
different groups, spurred by vast improvements in transport 
and communication. For example, in the hills bordering the 
states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala is a shrine for the god Ayyap- 
pan, whose origin is uncertain but who is sometimes called the 
offspring of Shiva and Vishnu in his female form. Ayyappan's 
annual festival is a time of pilgrimage for ever-growing num- 
bers of men from throughout South India. These devotees fast 
and engage in austerities under the leadership of a teacher for 
weeks beforehand and then travel in groups to the shrine for a 
glimpse of the god. Bus tickets are hard to obtain for several 
weeks as masses of elated men, clad in distinctive ritual dhotis 
of various colors, throng public transportation during their trip 
to the shrine. In northwestern India, the popularity of the god- 
dess Vaishno Devi has risen meteorically since independence. 
Vaishno Devi, who combines elements of Lakshmi and Durga, 
is an extremely benevolent manifestation of the eternal virgin 
who gives material well-being to her worshipers. One million 
pilgrims travel annually to her cave shrine in the foothills of 
the Himalayas, about fifty kilometers north of the city of 
Jammu. 

Since the 1950s, the most spectacular example of a deity's 
increasing influence throughout northern and central India is 
the cult of Santoshi Ma (Mother of Contentment). Her myths 
recount the sufferings of a young woman left alone by her 



144 



Religious Life 



working husband and abused by her in-laws, who nevertheless 
remains loving and faithful to her man and, by performing sim- 
ple vows to the goddess (fasting one day every week), eventu- 
ally sees the return of her now-rich husband and moves with 
him into her own house. Santoshi Ma, thought to be the 
daughter of Ganesh, is worshiped mostly by lower middle-class 
women who also pray for material goods. In the 1980s and early 
1990s, her shrines were spreading everywhere and even taking 
over older temples, aided by the release in the 1970s of an 
extremely popular film version of her story, Jay Santoshi Ma. 

The Ceremonies of Hinduism 

The ritual world of Hinduism, manifestations of which differ 
greatly among regions, villages, and individuals, offers a num- 
ber of common features that link all Hindus into a greater 
Indian religious system and influence other religions as well. 
The most notable feature in religious ritual is the division 
between purity and pollution. Religious acts presuppose some 
degree of impurity or defilement for the practitioner, which 
must be overcome or neutralized before or during ritual proce- 
dures. Purification, usually with water, is thus a typical feature 
of most religious action. Avoidance of the impure — taking ani- 
mal life, eating flesh, associating with dead things, or body flu- 
ids — is another feature of Hindu ritual and is important for 
repressing pollution. In a social context, those individuals or 
groups who manage to avoid the impure are accorded 
increased respect. Still another feature is a belief in the efficacy 
of sacrifice, including survivals of Vedic sacrifice. Thus, sacri- 
fices may include the performance of offerings in a regulated 
manner, with the preparation of sacred space, recitation of 
texts, and manipulation of objects. A third feature is the con- 
cept of merit, gained through the performance of charity or 
good works, that will accumulate over time and reduce suffer- 
ings in the next world. 

Domestic Worship 

The home is the place where most Hindus conduct their 
worship and religious rituals. The most important times of day 
for performance of household rituals are dawn and dusk, 
although especially devout families may engage in devotion 
more often. For many households, the day begins when the 
women in the house draw auspicious geometric designs in 



145 



India: A Country Study 

chalk or rice flour on the floor or the doorstep. For orthodox 
Hindus, dawn and dusk are greeted with recitation from the 
Rig Veda of the Gayatri Mantra for the sun — for many people, 
the only Sanskrit prayer they know. After a bath, there is per- 
sonal worship of the gods at a family shrine, which typically 
includes lighting a lamp and offering foodstuffs before the 
images, while prayers in Sanskrit or a regional language are 
recited. In the evenings, especially in rural areas, mostly female 
devotees may gather together for long sessions of singing 
hymns in praise of one or more of the gods. 

Minor acts of charity punctuate the day. During daily baths, 
there are offerings of a little water in memory of the ancestors. 
At each meal, families may set aside a handful of grain to be 
donated to beggars or needy persons, and daily gifts of small 
amounts of grain to birds or other animals serve to accumulate 
merit for the family through their self-sacrifice. 

Life-Cycle Rituals 

A detailed series of life-cycle rituals (samskara, or refine- 
ments) mark major transitions in the life of the individual. 
Especially orthodox Hindu families may invite Brahman priests 
to their homes to officiate at these rituals, complete with sacred 
fire and recitations of mantras. Most of these rituals, however, 
do not occur in the presence of such priests, and among many 
groups who do not revere the Vedas or respect Brahmans, 
there may be other officiants or variations in the rites. 

Ceremonies may be performed during pregnancy to ensure 
the health of the mother and growing child. The father may 
part the hair of the mother three times upward from the front 
to the back, to assure the ripening of the embryo. Charms may 
serve to ward off the evil eye and witches or demons. At birth, 
before the umbilical cord is severed, the father may touch the 
baby's lips with a gold spoon or ring dipped in honey, curds, 
and ghee. The word vak (speech) is whispered three times into 
the right ear, and mantras are chanted to ensure a long life. A 
number of rituals for the infant include the first visit outside to 
a temple, the first feeding with solid food (usually cooked 
rice), an ear-piercing ceremony, and the first haircut (shaving 
the head) that often occurs at a temple or during a festival 
when the hair is offered to a deity. 

A crucial event in the life of the orthodox, upper-caste 
Hindu male is an initiation (upanayana) ceremony, which takes 
place for some young males between the ages of six and twelve 



146 



Religious Life 



to mark the transition to awareness and adult religious respon- 
sibilities. At the ceremony itself, the family priest invests the 
boy with a sacred thread to be worn always over the left shoul- 
der, and the parents instruct him in pronouncing the Gayatri 
Mantra. The initiation ceremony is seen as a new birth; those 
groups entitled to wear the sacred thread are called the twice- 
born (see Glossary). In the ancient categorization of society 
associated with the Vedas, only the three highest groups — Brah- 
man, warrior (Kshatriya), and commoner or merchant 
(Vaishya) — were allowed to wear the thread, to make them dis- 
tinct from the fourth group of servants (Shudra). Many indi- 
viduals and groups who are only hazily associated with the old 
"twice-born" elites perform the upanayana ceremony and claim 
the higher status it bestows. For young Hindu women in South 
India, a different ritual and celebration occurs at the first 
menses. 

The next important transition in life is marriage. For most 
people in India, the betrothal of the young couple and the 
exact date and time of the wedding are matters decided by the 
parents in consultation with astrologers. At Hindu weddings, 
the bride and bridegroom represent the god and the goddess, 
although there is a parallel tradition that sees the groom as a 
prince coming to wed his princess. The groom, decked in all 
his finery, often travels to the wedding site on a caparisoned 
white horse or in an open limousine, accompanied by a proces- 
sion of relatives, musicians, and bearers of ornate electrified 
lamps. The actual ceremonies in many cases become extremely 
elaborate, but orthodox Hindu marriages typically have at their 
center the recitation of mantras by priests. In a crucial rite, the 
new couple take seven steps northward from a sacred house- 
hold fire, turn, and make offerings into the flames. Indepen- 
dent traditions in regional languages and among different 
caste groups support wide variations in ritual (see Life Pas- 
sages, ch. 5). 

After the death of a family member, the relatives become 
involved in ceremonies for preparation of the body and a pro- 
cession to the burning or burial ground. For most Hindus, cre- 
mation is the ideal method for dealing with the dead, although 
many groups practice burial instead; infants are buried rather 
than cremated. At the funeral site, in the presence of the male 
mourners, the closest relative of the deceased (usually the 
eldest son) takes charge of the final rite and, if it is cremation, 
lights the funeral pyre. After a cremation, ashes and fragments 



147 



India: A Country Study 

of bone are collected and eventually immersed in a holy river. 
After a funeral, everyone undergoes a purifying bath. The 
immediate family remains in a state of intense pollution for a 
set number of days (sometimes ten, eleven, or thirteen) . At the 
end of that period, close family members meet for a ceremo- 
nial meal and often give gifts to the poor or to charities. A par- 
ticular feature of the Hindu ritual is the preparation of rice 
balls (pinda) offered to the spirit of the dead person during 
memorial services. In part these ceremonies are seen as con- 
tributing to the merit of the deceased, but they also pacify the 
soul so that it will not linger in this world as a ghost but will pass 
through the realm of Yama, the god of death. 

Public Worship 

Temples 

The basic form of the temple in India is a square cell, ori- 
ented to the four cardinal directions, containing a platform 
with an image of the deity in the center, a flat roof overhead, 
and a doorway on the east side. In front of the doorway is a 
porch or platform, shaded by a roof supported by pillars, 
where worshipers gather before and after approaching the 
god. At the founding of the temple, priests establish a sancti- 
fied area in the center of the shrine and, while praying and per- 
forming rituals, set up the image of the god. The deity is then 
said to be one with the image, which contains or manifests the 
power of the god on earth. Every Hindu temple in India, then, 
exists as the center of the universe, where the god overlooks his 
or her domain and aids devotees. 

Worship at the temple is not congregational. Instead, indi- 
viduals or small groups of devotees approach the sanctum in 
order to obtain a vision (darshana) of the god, say prayers, and 
perform devotional worship. Because the god exists in totality 
in the shrine, any objects that touch the image or even enter 
the sanctum are filled with power and, when returned to their 
givers, confer the grace of the divine on the human world. 
Only persons of requisite purity who have been specially 
trained are able to handle the power of the deity, and most 
temple sanctums are operated by priests who take the offerings 
from worshipers, present them directly to the image of the 
deity, and then return most of the gifts to the devotees for use 
or consumption later at home. 



148 



Religious Life 



Since the sixth century, after the decline of Buddhism as the 
main focus of religious patronage, temples have been accumu- 
lating generous donations from kings, nobles, and the wealthy. 
The result is a huge number of shrines throughout the coun- 
try, many of which, especially in South India, date back hun- 
dreds of years. The statuary and embellishment in some of the 
ancient shrines constitute one of the world's greatest artistic 
heritages. The layout of major temples has expanded into 
gigantic architectural complexes. 

Along with architectural elaboration has come a complex 
administrative system to manage the many gifts bestowed by 
wealthy donors in the past and continually replenished by the 
piety of devotees in the present. The gods are legal landholders 
and command substantial investment portfolios throughout 
the country. The management of these fortunes in many states 
lies in the hands of private religious endowments, although in 
some states, such as Tamil Nadu, the state government man- 
ages most of the temples directly. Struggles over the control of 
temple administration have clogged the courts for several hun- 
dred years, and the news media readily report on the drama of 
these battles. Several cases have had an impact on religious, or 
communal, affairs. The most spectacular case involved owner- 
ship of a site in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, claimed by Hindus as 
the site of Ram's birth but taken over by Muslims as the site for 
a mosque, the Babri Masjid, built in 1528. After much postur- 
ing by the conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Indian 
People's Party) and its nationalist parent organization, the 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS — National Volunteer 
Organisation), matters came to a head in December 1992 (see 
Modern Transformations, this ch.; Political Parties, ch. 8). 
Some 200,000 militant Hindus, under the direction of RSS 
marshals, descended on Ayodhya, razing the Babri Masjid to 
the ground on December 6, 1992. Reprisals and communal vio- 
lence occurred throughout India and in neighboring Pakistan 
and Bangladesh (see Political Issues, ch. 8). 

Pilgrimage 

India is covered with holy sites associated with the exploits of 
the gods, the waters of a sacred river, or the presence of holy 
men. Texts called the Puranas (ancient lore in Sanskrit) con- 
tain lengthy sections that describe numerous sacred places and 
the merit gained by traveling to them in a devout manner. 
Bathing at such sites is a specially meritorious act. With the 



149 



Ghats on the banks of the Ganga at Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh 
Courtesy Bernice Huffman Collection, Library of Congress 



151 



India: A Country Study 

expansion of public transportation in the twentieth century, 
there has been a vast increase in the numbers of people who 
visit these spots to partake of the divine and visit new places. In 
fact, for many Indians pilgrimage is the preferred form of tour- 
ism, involving family and community groups in enjoyable and 
uplifting vacations. 

Certain important sites are well-known throughout India 
and attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims annually. Proba- 
bly the most significant is Varanasi (also known as Banaras, 
Benares, or Kashi) in southeastern Uttar Pradesh on the north 
bank of the Ganga. It is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains, 
who flock to the ghats, or steps, leading from temples down to 
the banks of the sacred Ganga in their search for an auspicious 
site for death, cremation, or immersion of ashes. Hardwar, in 
northwestern Uttar Pradesh, far up the Ganga in the foothills 
of the Himalayas, is theVaranasi of northwest India for Hindus 
living there and is a favorite spot for ritual bathing. There are 
numerous destinations in the Himalayas, including Badrinath 
and Kedarnath, isolated sites in northern Uttar Pradesh that 
once required a long journey on foot. In southern India, the 
rivers Kaveri, Krishna, and Godavari attract pilgrims to a large 
number of bathing sites, and the coastline features major tem- 
ples such as the Ramalingesvara Temple in Ramesvaram, Tamil 
Nadu, where Ram and his army crossed over to Lanka to rescue 
Sita. Pandharpur, in Maharashtra, is the destination for many 
thousands of devotees of Vitthala, an incarnation of Vishnu, 
whose tradition goes back at least to the thirteenth century and 
was written about by the great Marathi bhakti poets Namdev, 
Tukaram, and Eknath. There are smaller sites near almost 
every river or scenic hilltop. 

For many pilgrims, the process of getting to their destination 
involves preliminary vows and fasting, intensive cooperative 
efforts among different families and groups, extensive travel- 
ing on foot, and the constant singing of devotional songs. On 
arrival, groups of pilgrims often make contact with priests who 
specialize in the pilgrim trade and for a fee plan the group's 
schedule and ritual activity. At some of the major sites, the fam- 
ilies of the priests have served as hereditary guides for groups 
of pilgrims over many generations. Where a shrine is the focus, 
the devotee may circumambulate the buildings and wait in line 
for long hours just for a glimpse of the deity's image as security 
personnel move the crowds along. At auspicious bathing sites, 
pilgrims may have to wade through the crush of other devotees 



152 



Religious Life 



to dip into the sacred waters of a river or a tank. Worshipers 
engaged in special vows or in praying for the cure of a loved 
one may purchase shrine amulets to give to the god (which are 
circulated back to the shrine's shop) or purchase foodstuffs, 
sanctified by the god's presence, to take to friends and family. 
Nearby, souvenir hawkers and shopkeepers and sometimes 
even amusement parks contribute to a lively atmosphere that is 
certainly part of the attraction of many pilgrimage sites. 

Festivals 

A vast number of local Hindu festivals revolve around the 
worship of gods at the neighborhood, village, or caste level. All 
over India, at least once a year the images of the gods are taken 
from their shrines to travel in processions around their 
domains. The images are carried on palanquins that require 
human bearers or on human-drawn, large-wheeled carts. The 
images may be intricately made up in order for the stone or 
wooden statues to appear lifelike. They may wear costly vest- 
ments, and flower garlands may surround their necks or entire 
shrines. The gods move down village or city streets in parades 
that may include multiple palanquins and, at sites of major 
temples, even elephants decked out in traditional vestments. As 
the parade passes, throngs of worshipers pray and make vows to 
the gods while the community as a whole looks on and partici- 
pates in the spectacle. In many locations, these public parades 
go on for a number of days and include special events where 
the gods engage in "play" (lila) that may include mock battles 
and the defeat of demons. The ceremonial bathing of the 
images and displays of the gods in all their finery in public halls 
also occur. In the south, where temples stand at the geographic 
and psychological heart of village and town, some "chariots" of 
the gods stand many stories tall and require the concerted 
effort of dozens of men to pull them through the streets. 

There are a number of Hindu religious festivals that are offi- 
cially recognized by the government as "closed holidays," on 
which work stops throughout the country. The biggest of these 
occur within two blocks of time after the end of the southwest 
monsoon. The first comes at the end of the ten-day festival of 
Dussehra, late in the month of Asvina (September-October) 
according to the Shaka calendar, India's official calendar (see 
table 14, Appendix). This festival commemorates Ram's victory 
over Ravana and the rescue of his wife Sita (see Vishnu, this 
ch.). On the ninth day of Dusshera, people bless with sandal- 



153 



India: A Country Study 

wood paste the "weapons" of their business life, including 
everything from plows to computers. On the final day of Dusse- 
hra, in North India celebrating crowds set fire to huge paper 
effigies of Ravana. Several weeks later comes Dipavali (Diwali), 
or the Festival of Lights, in the month of Kartika (October- 
November). This is officially a one-day holiday, but in reality it 
becomes a week-long event when many people take vacations. 
One tradition links this festival to the victory of Krishna over 
the demon Naraka, but for most devotees the holiday is a recre- 
ation of Ram's triumphant return with Sita, his wife, from his 
adventures. People light rows of lamps and place them on sills 
around their houses, set off gigantic amounts of fireworks, pray 
for wealth and good fortune, distribute sweets, and send greet- 
ing cards to friends and business associates. 

The other closed holidays associated with Hindu festivals 
include Mahashivaratri, or the great night of Shiva, during the 
month of Magha (January-February). This festival celebrates 
Shiva's emanation of the universe through his cosmic dance, 
and is a day of fasting, visiting temples, and in many places stay- 
ing up all night to sing devotional songs. On the fourth day in 
the month of Bhadra (August-September) comes the festival 
of Ganesh Chaturthi. Families and businesses prepare for this 
festival by purchasing brightly painted images of Ganesh and 
worshiping them for a number of days. On the festival itself, 
with great celebration, participants bathe the images (and in 
most cases permanently dump them) in nearby rivers, lakes, or 
seas. Janmashtami, the birthday of Krishna, also occurs in the 
month of Bhadra. 

There are a large number of "restricted holidays" celebrated 
by the vast majority of the population and resulting in closures 
of business establishments. Major Hindu events include 
Ramanavami, the birthday of Ram in the month of Chaitra 
(March-April), and Holi, celebrated at the end of the month 
of Phalguna (February-March), when people engage in cross- 
dressing, play tricks on each other, and squirt colored water or 
powder on each other. These primarily northern festivals 
receive varying amounts of attention in other parts of the coun- 
try. A separate series of restricted holidays allow regional cul- 
tures to celebrate their own feasts, such as the harvest festival of 
Pongal in Tamil Nadu in midjanuary, which celebrates the har- 
vest and the sun's entrance into Capricorn. 



154 



Religious Life 



Islam 

Islam is India's largest minority religion, with Muslims offi- 
cially comprising 12.1 percent of the country's population, or 
101.6 million people as of the 1991 census. The largest concen- 
trations — about 52 percent of all Muslims in India — live in the 
states of Bihar (12 million), West Bengal (16 million), and 
Uttar Pradesh (24 million), according to the 1991 census. Mus- 
lims represent a majority of the local populations only in 
Jammu and Kashmir (not tabulated in 1991 but 65 percent in 
1981) and Lakshadweep (94 percent). As a faith with its roots 
outside South Asia, Islam also offers some striking contrasts to 
those religions that originated in India. 

Origins and Tenets 

Islam began with the ministry of the Prophet Muhammad 
(570-632), who belonged to a merchant family in the trading 
town of Mecca in Arabia. In his middle age, Muhammad 
received visions in which the Archangel Gabriel revealed the 
word of God to him. After 620 he publicly preached the mes- 
sage of these visions, stressing the oneness of God (Allah), 
denouncing the polytheism of his fellow Arabs, and calling for 
moral uplift of the population. He attracted a dedicated band 
of followers, but there was intense opposition from the leaders 
of the city, who profited from pilgrimage trade to the shrine 
called the Kaaba. In 622 Muhammad and his closest supporters 
migrated to the town of Yathrib (now renamed Medina) to the 
north and set up a new center of preaching and opposition to 
the leadership of Mecca. This move, the hijrah or hegira, 
marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar and the origin of 
the new religion of Islam. After a series of military engage- 
ments, Muhammad and his followers were able to defeat the 
authorities in Mecca and return to take control of the city. 
Before his death in 632, Muhammad was able to bring most of 
the tribes of Arabia into the fold of Islam. Soon after his death, 
the united Arabs conquered present-day Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and 
Iran, making Islam into a world religion by the end of the sev- 
enth century. 

Islam means submission to God, and a Muslim is one who 
has submitted to the will of God. At the center of the religion is 
an intense concentration on the unity of God and the separa- 
tion between God and his creatures. No physical representa- 
tion of God is allowed. There are no other gods. The duty of 



155 



India: A Country Study 

humanity is to profess the simple testimony: "There is no god 
but God (Allah), and Muhammad is his Prophet." Obedience 
to God's will rests on following the example of the Prophet in 
one's own life and faithfulness to the revelations collected into 
the most sacred text, the Quran. The Five Pillars of Islam are 
reciting the profession of faith; praying five times a day; alms- 
giving to the poor; fasting (abstaining from dawn to dusk from 
food, drink, sexual relations, and smoking) during the month 
of Ramazan (the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, known 
as Ramadan in Arab countries), the holy month when God's 
revelations were received by Muhammad; and making the pil- 
grimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once during one's life if possi- 
ble. People who obey God's commandments and live a good 
life will go to heaven after death; those who disobey will go to 
hell. All souls will be resurrected for a last judgment at the end 
of the world. Muslims view themselves as followers of the same 
tradition preserved in the Judaic and Christian scriptures, 
accept the prophetic roles of Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa 
(Moses), and Isa (Jesus), and view Islam as the final statement 
of revealed truth for the entire world. 

Regulation of the Muslim community rests primarily on 
rules in the Quran, then on authenticated tales of the conduct 
(sunna) of the Prophet Muhammad, then on reasoning, and 
finally on the consensus of opinion. By the end of the eighth 
century, four main schools of Muslim jurisprudence had 
emerged in Sunni (see Glossary) Islam to interpret the sharia 
(Islamic law). Prominent among these groups was the Hanafi 
school, which dominated most of India, and the Shafii school, 
which was more prevalent in South India. Because Islam has no 
ordained priesthood, direction of the Muslim community rests 
on the learning of religious scholars (ulama) who are expert in 
understanding the Quran and its appended body of commen- 
taries. 

Early leadership controversies within the Muslim community 
led to divisions that still have an impact on the body of believ- 
ers. When Muhammad died, leadership fell to his father-in-law, 
Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph (khalifa, or successor), a 
position that combined spiritual and secular power. A separate 
group advocated the leadership of Ali, the cousin and 
son-in-law of the Prophet, who had married his daughter 
Fatima. Leadership could have fallen to Ali's son Husayn, but, 
in the power struggle that followed, in 680 Husayn and seventy- 
two followers were murdered at Karbala (now in modern Iraq) . 



156 



Religious Life 



This leadership dispute formed the most crucial dividing 
point in Islamic history: the victorious party went on to found 
the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750), which had its headquarters at 
Damascus, leading the majority of Muslims in the Sunni path. 
The disaffected Shiat Ali (or Party of Ali) viewed only his line 
as legitimate and continued to follow descendants of Husayn as 
their leader (imam — see Glossary). Among the followers of this 
Shia (see Glossary) path, there is a party of "Seveners" who 
trace the lineage of imams down to Ismail (d. 762), the Seventh 
Imam and eldest son of the Sixth Imam. The Ismailis are the 
largest Shia group in India, and are concentrated in Maharash- 
tra and Gujarat. A second group, the "Twelvers" (the most 
numerous Shia group worldwide), traces the lineage of imams 
through twelve generations, believing that the last or Twelfth 
Imam became "hidden" and will reappear in the world as a sav- 
ior, or Mahdi, at some time in the future. 

The division between Sunni and Shia dates back to purely 
political struggles in the seventh century, but over time 
between the two major communities many divisive differences 
in ritual and legal interpretations have evolved. The vast major- 
ity of Muslims are Sunni, and in contemporary India 90 per- 
cent of Muslims follow this path. Sunnis have recognized no 
legitimate caliph after the position was abolished in Turkey in 
1924, placing the direction of the community clearly with the 
ulama. 

Public worship for the average Muslim consists of going to a 
mosque (masjid) — normally on Fridays, although mosques are 
well attended throughout the week — for congregational 
prayers led by a local imam, following the public call to prayer, 
which may be intoned from the top of a minaret ( minar) at the 
mosque. After leaving their footwear at the door, men and 
women separate; men usually sit in front, women in back, 
either inside the mosque or in an open courtyard. The prayer 
leader gives a sermon in the local regional language, perhaps 
interspersed with Arabic or Farsi (sometimes called Persian or 
Parsi) quotations, depending on his learning and the sophisti- 
cation of the audience. Announcements of events of interest 
that may include political commentary are often included. 
Then follow common prayers that involve responses from the 
worshipers who stand, bow, and kneel in unison during devo- 
tions. 



157 



India: A Country Study 

Islamic Traditions in South Asia 

Muslims practice a series of life-cycle rituals that differ from 
those of Hindus, Jains, or Buddhists. The newborn baby has 
the call to prayer whispered into the left ear, the profession of 
faith whispered into the right ear, honey or date paste placed 
in the mouth, and a name selected. On the sixth day after 
birth, the first bath occurs. On the seventh day or a multiple of 
the seventh, the head is shaved, and alms are distributed, ide- 
ally in silver weighing as much as the hair; a sacrifice of animals 
imitates the sheep sacrificed instead of Ishmael (Ismail) in bib- 
lical times. Religious instruction starts at age four years, four 
months, and four days, beginning with the standard phrase: "In 
the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful." Male circumci- 
sion takes place between the ages of seven and twelve. Marriage 
requires a payment by the husband to the wife and the solemni- 
zation of a marital contract in a social gathering. Marriage cer- 
emonies include the donning of a nose ring by the bride, or in 
South India a wedding necklace, and the procession of the 
bridegroom. In a traditional wedding, males and females 
attend ceremonies in different rooms, in keeping with the seg- 
regation of sexes in most social settings. After death the family 
members wash and enshroud the body, after which it is buried 
as prayers from the Quran are recited. On the third day, friends 
and relatives come to console the bereaved, read the Quran, 
and pray for the soul of the deceased. The family observe a 
mourning period of up to forty days. 

The annual festivals of Islam are based on a lunar calendar 
of 354 days, which makes the Islamic holy year independent of 
the Gregorian calendar. Muslim festivals make a complete cir- 
cuit of the solar year every thirty-three years. 

The beginning of the Islamic calendar is the month of 
Muharram, the tenth day of which is Ashura, the anniversary of 
the death of Husayn, the son of Ali. Ashura, a major holiday, is 
of supreme importance for the Shia. Devotees engage in ritual- 
ized mourning that may include processions of colorful repli- 
cas of Husayn's tomb at Karbala and standards with palms on 
top, which are carried by barefoot mourners and buried at an 
imitation Karbala. In many areas of India, these parades pro- 
vide a dramatic spectacle that draws large numbers of 
non-Muslim onlookers. Demonstrations of grief may include 
bouts of self-flagellation that can draw blood and may take 
place in public streets, although many families retain personal 
mourning houses. Sunni Muslims may also commemorate 



158 



A late nineteenth-century view of the Jama Masjid (Friday Mosque), 
India's largest mosque, built in the seventeenth century, Delhi 
Courtesy Stereograph Collection, Library of Congress 

Husayn's death but in a less demonstrative manner, concentrat- 
ing instead on the redemptive aspect of his martyrdom. 

The last day of Ramazan is Id al Fitr (Feast of Breaking the 
Fast), another national holiday, which ends the month of fast- 
ing with almsgiving, services in mosques, and visits to friends 
and neighbors. Bakr Id, or Id al Zuha (Feast of Sacrifice), 
begins on the tenth day of the Islamic month of Dhul Hijjah 
and is a major holiday. Prescribed in the Quran, Id al Zuha 
commemorates Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael 
(rather than Ishaq — Isaac — as in the Judeo-Christian tradition) 
according to God's command, but it is also the high point of 
the pilgrim's ritual cycle while on the hajj in Mecca. All of these 
festivals involve large feasts, gifts given to family and neighbors, 
and the distribution of food for charitable purposes. 

A significant aspect of Islam in India is the importance of 



159 



India: A Country Study 

shrines attached to the memory of great Sufi saints. Sufism is a 
mystical path (tariqat) as distinct from the path of the sharia. A 
Sufi attains a direct vision of oneness with God, often on the 
edges of orthodox behavior, and can thus become a pir (living 
saint) who may take on disciples (murids) and set up a spiritual 
lineage that can last for generations. Orders of Sufis became 
important in India during the thirteenth century following the 
ministry of Muinuddin Chishti (1142-1236), who settled in 
Ajmer, Raj as than, and attracted large numbers of converts to 
Islam because of his holiness. His Chishtiyya order went on to 
become the most influential Sufi lineage in India, although 
other orders from Central Asia and Southwest Asia also 
reached to India and played a large role in the spread of Islam. 
Many Sufis were well known for weaving music, dance, intoxi- 
cants, and local folktales into their songs and lectures. In this 
way, they created a large literature in regional languages that 
embedded Islamic culture deeply into older South Asian tradi- 
tions. 

In the case of many great teachers, the memory of their holi- 
ness has been so intense that they are still viewed as active inter- 
cessors with God, and their tombs have become the site of rites 
and prayers by disciples and lay people alike. Tales of miracu- 
lous deeds associated with the tombs of great saints have 
attracted large numbers of pilgrims attempting to gain cures 
for physical maladies or solutions to personal problems. The 
tomb of the pir thus becomes a dargah (gateway) to God and 
the focus for a wide range of rituals, such as daily washing and 
decoration by professional attendants, touching or kissing the 
tomb or contact with the water that has washed it, hanging peti- 
tions on the walls of the shrine surrounding the tomb, lighting 
incense, and giving money. 

The descendants of the original pir are sometimes seen as 
inheritors of his spiritual energy, and, as pirs in their own right, 
they might dispense amulets sanctified by contact with them or 
with the tomb. The annual celebration of the pir's death is a 
major event at important shrines, attracting hundreds of thou- 
sands of devotees for celebrations that may last for days. Free 
communal kitchens and distribution of sweets are also big 
attractions of these festivals, at which Muslim fakirs, or wander- 
ing ascetics, sometimes appear and where public demonstra- 
tions of self-mortification, such as miraculous piercing of the 
body and spiritual possession of devotees, sometimes occur. 
Every region of India can boast of at least one major Sufi shrine 



160 



A Muslim bride, Madhya 
Pradesh 

Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



that attracts expressive devotion, which remains important, 
especially for Muslim women. 

The leadership of the Muslim community has pursued vari- 
ous directions in the evolution of Indian Islam during the twen- 
tieth century. The most conservative wing has typically rested 
on the education system provided by the hundreds of religious 
training institutes (madrasa) throughout the country, which 
have tended to stress the study of the Quran and Islamic texts 
in Arabic and Persian, and have focused little on modern man- 
agerial and technical skills (see Education and Society, ch. 2). 
Several national movements have emerged from this sector of 
the Muslim community. The Jamaati Islami (Islamic Party), 
founded in 1941, advocates the establishment of an overtly 
Islamic government through peaceful, democratic, and non- 
missionary activities. It had about 3,000 active members and 
40,000 sympathizers in the mid-1980s. The Tablighi Jamaat 
(Outreach Society) became active after the 1940s as a move- 
ment, primarily among the ulama, stressing personal renewal, 
prayer, a missionary and cooperative spirit, and attention to 
orthodoxy. It has been highly critical of the kind of activities 
that occur in and around Sufi shrines and remains a minor if 
respected force in the training of the ulama. Other ulama have 



161 



India: A Country Study 

upheld the legitimacy of mass religion, including exaltation of 
pin and the memory of the Prophet. A powerful secularizing 
drive led to the founding of Aligarh Muslim University 
(founded in 1S75 as the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Col- 
lege) — with its modern curriculum — and other major Muslim 
universities. This educational drive has remained the most 
dominant force in guiding the Muslim community. 

Sikhism 

Sikhism has about 20 million believers worldwide but has an 
importance far bevond those numbers because Sikhs have 
plaved a disproportionately large role in the armed forces and 
public affairs in India for the last 400 years. Although most 
Indian Sikhs ( 79 percent) remain concentrated in the state of 
Punjab, nearlv 3.5 million Sikhs live outside the state, while 
about 4 million live abroad. This Sikh diaspora, driven bv ambi- 
tion and economic success, has made Sikhism a world religion 
as well as a significant minority force within the country 

Early History and Tenets 

Sikhism be^an with Guru Xanak ( 1469-1539). a member of 
a trading caste in Punjab who seems to have been employed for 
some time as a government servant, was married and had two 
sons, and at age forty-five became a religious teacher. At the 
heart of his message was a philosophy of universal love, devo- 
tion to God. and the equality of all men and women before 
God. He set up congregations of believers who ate together in 
free communal kitchens in an overt attempt to break down 
caste boundaries based on food prohibitions. As a poet, musi- 
cian, and enlightened master. Xanak's reputation spread, and 
bv the time he died he had founded a new religion of "disci- 
ples" ( shiksha or sikh) that followed his example. 

Xanak's son. Baba Sri Chand. founded the Udasi sect of celi- 
bate ascetics, which continued in the 1990s. However. Xanak 
chose as his successor not his son but Angad (1504-52) . his 
chief disciple, to carrv on the work as the second guru. Thus 
began a lineage of teachers that lasted until 1 70S and 
amounted to ten gurus in the Sikh tradition, each of whom is 
\iewed as an enlightened master who propounded directly the 
word of God. The third guru 3 Amar Das | 1479-1574). estab- 
lished missionary centers to spread the message and was so well 
respected that the Mughal emperor Akbar visited him ( see The 



162 



Religious Life 



Mughals, ch. 1). Amar Das appointed his son-in-law Ram Das 
(1534-81) to succeed him, establishing a hereditary succession 
for the position of guru. He also built a tank for water at Amrit- 
sar in Punjab, which, after his death, became the holiest center 
of Sikhism. 

By the late sixteenth century, the influence of the Sikh reli- 
gion on Punjabi society was coming to the notice of political 
authorities. The fifth guru, Arjun Das (1563-1606), was exe- 
cuted in Lahore by the Mughal emperor Jahangir (r. 1605-27) 
for alleged complicity in a rebellion. In response, the next 
guru, Hargobind (d. 1644), militarized and politicized his posi- 
tion and fought three battles with Mughal forces. Hargobind 
established a militant tradition of resistance to persecution by 
the central government in Delhi that remains an important 
motif in Sikh consciousness. Hargobind also established at 
Amritsar, in front of the Golden Temple, the central shrine 
devoted to Sikhism, the Throne of the Eternal God (Akal 
Takht) from which the guru dispensed justice and adminis- 
tered the secular affairs of the community, clearly establishing 
the tradition of a religious state that remains a major issue. The 
ninth guru, Tegh Bahadur (1621-75), because he refused 
Mughal emperor Aurangzeb's order to convert to Islam, was 
brought to Delhi and beheaded on a site that later became an 
important gurdwara (abode of the guru, a Sikh temple) on 
Chandni Chauk, one of the old city's main thoroughfares. 

These events led the tenth guru, Gobind Singh (1666- 
1708), to transform the Sikhs into a militant brotherhood dedi- 
cated to defense of their faith at all times. He instituted a bap- 
tism ceremony involving the immersion of a sword in sugared 
water that initiates Sikhs into the Khalsa (khalsa, from the Per- 
sian term for "the king's own," often taken to mean army of the 
pure) of dedicated devotion. The outward signs of this new 
order were the "Five Ks" to be observed at all times: uncut hair 
(kesh), a long knife (kirpari), a comb (kangha), a. steel bangle 
(kard), and a special kind of breeches not reaching below the 
knee (kachha). Male Sikhs took on the surname Singh (mean- 
ing lion), and women took the surname Kaur (princess). All 
made vows to purify their personal behavior by avoiding intoxi- 
cants, including alcohol and tobacco. In modern India, male 
Sikhs who have dedicated themselves to the Khalsa do not cut 
their beards and keep their long hair tied up under turbans, 
preserving a distinctive personal appearance recognized 
throughout the world. 



163 



India: A Country Study 

Much of Guru Gobind Singh's later life was spent on the 
move, in guerrilla campaigns against the Mughal Empire., 
which was entering the last days of its effective authority under 
Aurangzeb (1658-1707). .After Gobind Singh's death, the line 
of gurus ended, and their message continued through the Adi 
Granth (Original Book), which dates from 1604 and later 
became known as the Guru Granth Sahib (Holy Book of the 
Gurus). The Guru Granth Sahib is revered as a continuation of 
the line of gurus and as the living word of God bv all Sikhs and 
stands at the heart of all ceremonies. 

Most of the Sikh gurus were excellent musicians, who com- 
posed songs that conveved their message to the masses in the 
saints' own language, which combined variants of Punjabi with 
Hindi and Braj and also contained Arabic and Persian vocabu- 
lary Written in Gurmukhi script, these songs are one of the 
main sources of earlv Punjabi language and literature. There 
are 5. $94 hvmns in all. arranged according to the musical mea- 
sure in which thev are sung. An interesting feature of this liter- 
ature is that 937 songs and poems are bv well-known bhakti 
saints who were not members of the lineage of Sikh gurus, 
including the North Indian saint Kabir and five Muslim devo- 
tees. In the Guru Granth Sahib, God is called bv all the Hindu 
names and bv Allah as well. From its beginnings, then. Sikhism 
was an inclusive faith that attempted to encompass and enrich 
other Indian religious traditions. 

The belief system propounded bv the gurus has its origins in 
the philosophy and devotions of Hinduism and Islam, but the 
formulation of Sikhism is unique. God is the creator of the uni- 
verse and is without qualities or differentiation in himself. The 
universe ( samsar) is not sinful in its origin but is covered with 
impurities: it is not suffering, but a transitory opportunity for 
the soul to recognize its true nature and break the cvcle of 
rebirth. The unregenerate person is dominated bv self-interest 
and remains immersed in illusion ( ma\a). leading to bad 
karma. Meanwhile. God desires that his creatures escape and 
achieve enlightenment (nirvana) bv recognizing his order in 
the universe. He does this bv manifesting his grace as a holy 
word, attainable through recognition and recitation of God's 
holv name ( nam). The role of the guru, who is the manifesta- 
tion of God in the world, is to teach the means for praver 
through the Guru Granth Sahib and the community of believers. 
The guru in this system, and bv extension the Guru Granth 



164 



The Golden Temple of the Sikhs, Amritsar, Punjab, in a late 

nineteenth-century photograph 
Courtesy Stereograph Collection, Library of Congress 

Sahib, are coexistent with the divine and play a decisive role in 
saving the world. 

Where the Guru Granth Sahib is present, that place becomes 
a gurdwara. Many Sikh homes contain separate rooms or desig- 
nated areas where a copy of the book stands as the center of 
devotional ceremonies. Throughout Punjab, or anywhere there 
is a substantial body of believers, there are special shrines 
where the Guru Granth Sahib is displayed permanently or is 
installed daily in a ceremonial manner. These public gurdwaras 
are the centers of Sikh community life and the scene of peri- 
odic assemblies for worship. The typical assembly involves 
group singing from the Guru Granth Sahib, led by distinguished 
believers or professional singers attached to the shrine, distri- 
bution of holy food, and perhaps a sermon delivered by the 
custodian of the shrine. 



165 



India: A Country Study 

As for domestic and life-cycle rituals, well into the twentieth 
century many Sikhs followed Hindu customs for birth, mar- 
riage, and death ceremonies, including readings from Hindu 
scriptures and the employment of Brahmans as officiants. 
Reform movements within the Sikh community have purged 
many of these customs, substituting instead readings from the 
Guru Granth Sahib as the focus for rituals and the employment 
of Sikh ritual specialists. At major public events — weddings, 
funerals, or opening a new business — patrons may fund a read- 
ing of the entire Guru Granth Sahib by special reciters. 

Twentieth-Century Developments 

The existence of the Khalsa creates a potential division 
within the Sikh community between those who have under- 
gone the baptism ceremony and those who practice the system 
laid down in the Guru Granth Sahib but who do not adopt the 
distinctive life-style of the Khalsa. Among the latter is a sect of 
believers founded by Baba Dayal (d. 1853) named the Niran- 
karis, who concentrate on the formless quality of God and his 
revelation purely through the guru and the Guru Granth Sahib, 
and who accept the existence of a living, enlightened teacher 
as essential for spiritual development. The dominant tendency 
among the Sikhs since the late nineteenth century has been to 
stress the importance of the Khalsa and its outward signs. 

Revivalist movements of the late nineteenth century cen- 
tered on the activities of the Singh Sabha (Assembly of Lions), 
who successfully moved much of the Sikh community toward 
their own ritual systems and away from Hindu customs, and 
culminated in the Akali (eternal) mass movement in the 1920s 
to take control of gurdwaras away from Hindu managers and 
invest it in an organization representing the Sikhs. The result 
was passage of the Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925, which estab- 
lished the Central Gurdwara Management Committee to man- 
age all Sikh shrines in Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh 
through an assembly of elected Sikhs. The combined revenues 
of hundreds of shrines, which collected regular contributions 
and income from endowments, gave the committee a large 
operating budget and considerable authority over the religious 
life of the community. A simultaneous process led to the Akali 
Dal (Eternal Party), a political organization that originally 
coordinated nonviolent agitations to gain control over gur- 
dwaras, then participated in the independence struggle, and 
since 1947 has competed for control over the Punjab state gov- 



166 



Religious Life 



eminent. The ideology of the Akali Dal is simple — 
single-minded devotion to the guru and preservation of the 
Sikh faith through political power — and the party has served to 
mobilize a majority of Sikhs in Punjab around issues that stress 
Sikh separatism. 

There is no official priesthood within Sikhism or any widely 
accepted institutional mechanism for policy making for the 
entire faith. Instead, decisions are made by communities of 
believers (sangat) based on the Guru Granth Sahib — a tradition 
dating back to the eighteenth century when scattered bodies of 
believers had to fight against persecution and manage their 
own affairs. Anyone may study the scriptures intensively and 
become a "knower" (giant) who is recognized by fellow believ- 
ers, and there is a variety of training institutes with full-time stu- 
dents and teachers. 

Leaders of sects and sectarian training institutions may feel 
free to issue their own orders. When these orders are com- 
bined with the prestige and power of the Central Gurdwara 
Management Committee and the Akali Dal, which have explic- 
itly narrow administrative goals and are often faction-ridden, a 
mixture of images and authority emerges that often leaves the 
religion as a whole without clear leadership. Thus it became 
possible for Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, head of a train- 
ing institution, to stand forth as a leading authority on the 
direction of Sikhism; initiate reforms of personal morality; par- 
ticipate in the persecution of Nirankaris; and take effective 
control of the holiest Sikh shrine, the Golden Temple in Amrit- 
sar, Punjab, in the early 1980s. His takeover of the Golden Tem- 
ple led to a violent siege and culminated in the devastation of 
the shrine by the army in 1984 (see The Rise of Indira Gandhi, 
ch. 1; Insurgent Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). 
Later terrorist activities in Punjab, carried out in the name of 
Sikhism, were performed by a wide range of organizations 
claiming to represent an authoritative vision of the nature and 
direction of the community as a whole. 

Other Minority Religions 

Tribal Religions 

Among the 68 million citizens of India who are members of 
tribal groups, the religious concepts, terminologies, and prac- 
tices are as varied as the hundreds of tribes, but members of 
these groups have one thing in common: they are under con- 



167 



India: A Country Study 



stant pressure from the major organized religions. Some of this 
pressure is intentional, as outside missionaries work among 
tribal groups to gain converts. Most of the pressure, however, 
comes from the process of integration within a national politi- 
cal and economic system that brings tribes into increasing con- 
tact with other groups and different, prestigious belief systems. 
In general, those tribes that remain geographically isolated in 
desert, hill, and forest regions or on islands are able to retain 
their traditional cultures and religions longer. Those tribes that 
make the transition away from hunting and gathering and 
toward sedentary agriculture, usually as low-status laborers, 
find their ancient religious forms in decay and their place filled 
by practices of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism. 

One of the most studied tribal religions is that of the Santal 
of Orissa, Bihar, and West Bengal, one of the largest tribes in 
India, having a population estimated at 4.2 million. According 
to the 1991 census, however, only 23,645 people listed Santal as 
their religious belief. 

According to the Santal religion, the supreme deity, who ulti- 
mately controls the entire universe, is Thakurji. The weight of 
belief, however, falls on a court of spirits (bonga), who handle 
different aspects of the world and who must be placated with 
prayers and offerings in order to ward off evil influences. 
These spirits operate at the village, household, ancestor, and 
subclan level, along with evil spirits that cause disease, and can 
inhabit village boundaries, mountains, water, tigers, and the 
forest. A characteristic feature of the Santal village is a sacred 
grove on the edge of the settlement where many spirits live and 
where a series of annual festivals take place. 

The most important spirit is Maran Buru (Great Mountain), 
who is invoked whenever offerings are made and who 
instructed the first Santals in sex and brewing of rice beer. 
Maran Buru's consort is the benevolent Jaher Era (Lady of the 
Grove). 

A yearly round of rituals connected with the agricultural 
cycle, along with life-cycle rituals for birth, marriage and burial 
at death, involves petitions to the spirits and offerings that 
include the sacrifice of animals, usually birds. Religious leaders 
are male specialists in medical cures who practice divination 
and witchcraft. Similar beliefs are common among other tribes 
of northeast and central India such as the Kharia, Munda, and 
Oraon. 



168 



Religious Life 



Smaller and more isolated tribes often demonstrate less 
articulated classification systems of the spiritual hierarchy, 
described as animism or a generalized worship of spiritual 
energies connected with locations, activities, and social groups. 
Religious concepts are intricately entwined with ideas about 
nature and interaction with local ecological systems. As in San- 
tal religion, religious specialists are drawn from the village or 
family and serve a wide range of spiritual functions that focus 
on placating potentially dangerous spirits and coordinating rit- 
uals. 

Unlike the Santal, who have a large population long accus- 
tomed to agriculture and a distinguished history of resistance 
to outsiders, many smaller tribal groups are quite sensitive to 
ecological degradation caused by modernization, and their 
unique religious beliefs are under constant threat. Even among 
the Santal, there are 300,000 Christians who are alienated from 
traditional festivals, although even among converts the belief 
in the spirits remains strong. Among the Munda and Oraon in 
Bihar, about 25 percent of the population are Christians. 
Among the Kharia of Bihar (population about 130,000), about 
60 percent are Christians, but all are heavily influenced by 
Hindu concepts of major deities and the annual Hindu cycle of 
festivals. Tribal groups in the Himalayas were similarly affected 
by both Hinduism and Buddhism in the late twentieth century. 
Even the small hunting-and-gathering groups in the union ter- 
ritory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands have been under severe 
pressure because of immigration to this area and the resulting 
reduction of their hunting area. 

Christianity 

The first Christians in India, according to tradition and leg- 
end, were converted by Saint Thomas the Apostle, who arrived 
on the Malabar Coast of India in A.D. 52. After evangelizing 
and performing miracles in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, he is 
believed to have been martyred in Madras and buried on the 
site of San Thome Cathedral. Members of the Syro-Malabar 
Church, an eastern rite of the Roman Catholic Church, 
adopted the Syriac liturgy dating from fourth century Antioch. 
They practiced what is also known as the Malabar rite until the 
arrival of the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century. Soon 
thereafter, the Portuguese attempted to latinize the Malabar 
rite, an action which, by the mid-sixteenth century, led to 
charges of heresy against the Syro-Malabar Church and a 



169 



India: A Country Study 

lengthy round of political machinations. By the middle of the 
next century, a schism occurred when the adherents of the 
Malankar rite (or Syro-Malankara Church) broke away from 
the Syro-Malabar Church. Fragmentation continued within the 
Syro-Malabar Church up through the early twentieth century 
when a large contingent left to join the Nestorian Church, 
which had had its own roots in India since the sixth or seventh 
century. By 1887, however, the leaders of the Syro-Malabar 
Church had reconciled with Rome, which formally recognized 
the legitimacy of the Malabar rite. The Syro-Malankara Church 
was reconciled with Rome in 1930 and, while retaining the Syr- 
iac liturgy, adopted the Malayalam language instead of the 
ancient Syriac language. 

Throughout this period, foreign missionaries made numer- 
ous converts to Christianity. Early Roman Catholic missionar- 
ies, particularly the Portuguese, led by the Jesuit Saint Francis 
Xavier (1506-52), expanded from their bases on the west coast 
making many converts, especially among lower castes and out- 
castes. The miraculously undecayed body of Saint Francis 
Xavier is still on public view in a glass coffin at the Basilica of 
Bom Jesus in Goa. Beginning in the eighteenth century, Protes- 
tant missionaries began to work throughout India, leading to 
the growth of Christian communities of many varieties. 

The total number of Christians in India according to the 
1991 census was 19.6 million, or 2.3 percent of the population. 
About 13.8 million of these Christians were Roman Catholics, 
including 300,000 members of the Syro-Malankara Church. 
The remainder of Roman Catholics were under the Catholic 
Bishops' Conference of India. In January 1993, after centuries 
of self-government, the 3 .5-million-strong Latin-rite 
Syro-Malabar Church was raised to archepiscopate status as 
part of the Roman Catholic Church. In total, there were nine- 
teen archbishops, 103 bishops, and about 15,000 priests in 
India in 1995. 

Most Protestant denominations are represented in India, the 
result of missionary activities throughout the country, starting 
with the onset of British rule. Most denominations, however, 
are almost exclusively staffed by Indians, and the role of for- 
eign missionaries is limited. The largest Protestant denomina- 
tion in the country is the Church of South India, since 1947 a 
union of Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational, Methodist, 
and Anglican congregations with approximately 2.2 million 
members. A similar Church of North India has 1 million mem- 



170 



Religious Life 



bers. There are 473,000 Methodists, 425,000 Baptists, and 
about 1.3 million Lutherans. Orthodox churches of the Malan- 
kara and Malabar rites total 2 million and 700,000 members, 
respectively. 

All Christian churches have found the most fertile ground 
for expansion among Dalits, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled 
Tribe groups (see Tribes, ch. 4). During the twentieth century, 
the fastest growing Christian communities have been located in 
the northeast, among the Khasis, Mizos, Nagas, and other hill 
tribes. Christianity offers a non-Hindu mode of acculturation 
during a period when the state and modern economy have 
been radically transforming the life-styles of the hill peoples. 
Missionaries have led the way in the development of written 
languages and literature for many tribal groups. Christian 
churches have provided a focus for unity among different eth- 
nic groups and have brought with them a variety of charitable 
services. 

Zoroastrianism 

According to the 1991 census, there were 79,382 members of 
the Zoroastrian faith. Some 79 percent lived in Maharashtra 
(primarily in Bombay) and most of the rest in Gujarat. Zoroas- 
trians are primarily descendants of tenth-century immigrants 
from Persia who preserved the religion of Zoroaster, a prophet 
of Iran who taught probably in the sixth century B.C. Although 
the number of Parsis steadily declined during the twentieth 
century as a result of emigration and low birth rates, their reli- 
gion is significant because of the financial influence wielded by 
this mostly trading community and because they represent the 
world's largest surviving group of believers in this ancient faith. 

Originally, the Parsis were shipbuilders and traders located 
in the ports and towns of Gujarat. Their freedom from food or 
occupational restrictions based on caste affiliation enabled 
them to take advantage of the numerous commercial opportu- 
nities that accompanied the colonial expansion of trade and 
control. Substantial numbers moved to Bombay, which served 
as a base for expanding their business activities throughout 
India and abroad. A combination of Western commercial con- 
tacts and English-language education during the colonial 
period made the Parsis arguably the most cosmopolitan com- 
munity in India. Socially, they were equally at home with Indi- 
ans and Westerners; Parsi women enjoyed freedom of 
movement earlier than most high-caste Hindu or upper-class 



171 



India: A Country Study 

Muslim women. In contemporary India, Parsis are the most 
urban, elite, and wealthy of any of the nation's religious groups. 
Their role in the development of trade, industry, finance, and 
philanthropy has earned them an important place in the coun- 
try's social and economic life, and several have achieved high 
rank in government. 

The source of Parsi religion is a body of texts called the 
Avesta, which includes a number of sections in archaic lan- 
guage attributed to Zoroaster himself, and which preserve the 
cult of the fire sacrifice as the focus of ritual life. The supreme 
spirit is Ahura Mazda (or Ohrmazd), whose will is manifest in 
the world through the actions of bountiful immortals or good 
spiritual attributes that support life and love. Opposing the 
supreme spirit is the force of evil, Angra Mainyu (or Ahriman), 
which is the cause of all destruction and corruption in the 
world. Equipped with free will, humans can choose sides in this 
struggle and after death will appear at the bridge of judgment. 
People who choose to do good deeds go to heaven, those who 
commit evil go to hell. The opposed cosmic forces battle 
through the history of the universe, until at the end of time 
there will be a final judgment and a resurrection of the dead to 
a perfect world. 

The extensive ritual life of devout Parsis revolves around 
sacred fires, of which there are three grades dependent on 
extensive ceremonial preparation. The highest two grades can 
only be maintained in fire temples by hereditary priests, who 
undergo extensive purificatory rites and wear special face 
masks to prevent polluting the flames with breath or saliva, 
while the third grade of fire can exist in the household. The 
most important rite for most lay people is the Navjote, which 
occurs between the seventh and fifteenth year of life, and ini- 
tiates the young person into the adult community. The cere- 
mony involves purifying bathing, reciting Av £5ta-based 
scriptures, and being invested with a sacred shirt (sudrah) and 
waist thread (kusti) that should always be worn thereafter. Mar- 
riage is also an important rite, complete with scriptural recita- 
tions. At death, great care is taken to avoid pollution from the 
body, and funeral services usually take place within twenty-four 
hours. The dead are then disposed of by exposure to vultures 
on large, circular "towers of silence" (dakhma). Most rituals 
take place in the home or in special pavilions; congregational 
worship at fire temples is limited to spring and autumn festi- 
vals. 



172 



San Thome Cathedral, the 
burial place of Saint Thomas the 
Apostle, in Madras, Tamil 
Nadu 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 




The towns of Sanjan, Nausari, and Udvada in Gujarat are of 
prime importance to Parsis, having long served as community 
centers before mass migration to Bombay in the nineteenth 
century Bombay is home to 70 percent of India's Parsis, where 
the management of Parsi affairs rests in the hands of a pan- 
chayat (see Glossary), the assembly that serves as a charitable 
and educational organization providing a comprehensive 
social welfare system at the local level. 

Judaism 

Trade contacts between the Mediterranean region and the 
west coast of India probably led to the presence of small Jewish 
settlements in India as long ago as the early first millennium 
B.C. In Kerala a community of Jews tracing its origin to the fall 
of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has remained associated with the cities 
of Cranganore and Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) for at 
least 1,000 years. The Pardesi Synagogue in Kochi, rebuilt in 
1568, is in the architectural style of Kerala but preserves the 
archaic ritual style of the Sephardic rite, with Babylonian and 
Yemenite influence as well. The Jews of Kochi, concentrated 
mostly in the old 'Jew Town," were completely integrated into 
local culture, speaking Malayalam and taking local names while 
preserving their knowledge of Hebrew and contacts with 



173 



In dm: A Co u n try St u dy 

Southwest Asia. A separate community of Jews, called the Bene 
Israel., had lived along the Konkan Coast in and around Bom- 
bay. Pune. and Ahmadabad for almost 2.000 Years. Unlike the 
Kochi Jews, they became a village-based society and maintained 
little contact with other Jewish communities. Thev always 
remained within the orthodox Jewish fold, practicing the 
Sephardic rite without rabbis, with the synagogue as the center 
of religious and cultural life. A third group of Jews immigrated 
to India, becnnnins: at the end of the eighteenth century fol- 
lowing the trade contacts established bv the British Empire. 
These Baghdad Jews came mostly from the area of modern 
Iraq and settled in Bombay and Calcutta., where manv of them 
became wealthy and participated in the economic leadership 
of these growings cities. 

The population of the Kochi Jews, always small, had 
decreased from 5.000 in 1951 to about fifty in the earlv 1990s. 
During the same period., the Bene Israel decreased from about 
20,000 to 5.000. while the Baghdadjews declined from 5..000 to 
250. Emigration to Australia. Israel. Britain, and North Amer- 
ica accounts for most of this decline. According to the 1981 
Indian census, there were 5.61 8 Jews in India., down from 5.825 
in 1971. The 1991 census showed a further decline to 5.271. 
most of whom lived in Maharashtra and Mizoram. 

Modern Transformations 

The process of modernization in India, well under way dur- 
ing the British colonial period (1757-1947 ) . has brought with 
it major changes in the organizational forms of all religions. 
The missionary societies that came ^sith the British in the earlv 
nineteenth centurv imported, along with modern concepts of 
print media and propaganda, an ideology of intellectual com- 
petition and religious conversion. Instead of the customary 
interpretation of rituals and texts along received sectarian 
lines. Indian religious leaders began devising intellectual syn- 
theses that could encompass the varied beliefs and practices of 
their traditions within a framework that could withstand Chris- 
tian arguments. 

One of the most important reactions was the Arya Samaj 
(Arva Society), founded in 1875 bv Swami Davananda (1824- 
83). which went back to the Vedas as the ultimate revealed 
source of truth and attempted to purge Hinduism of more 
recent accretions that had no basis in the scriptures. Originally 
active in Punjab., this small society still works to purify Hindu 



174 



Religious Life 



rituals, converts tribal people, and runs centers throughout 
India. Other responses include the Ramakrishna order of 
renunciants established by Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), 
which set forth a unifying philosophy that followed the Vedanta 
teacher Shankara and other teachers by accepting all paths as 
ultimately leading toward union with the undifferentiated brah- 
man (see The Tradition of the Enlightened Master, this ch.). 
One of the primary goals of the Ramakrishna movement has 
been to educate Hindus about their own scriptures; the move- 
ment also runs book stores and study centers in all major cities. 
Both of these paths are directly modeled on the institutional 
and intellectual forms used by European missionaries and reli- 
gious leaders. 

During the 1930s and 1940s, again responding to institu- 
tional models from Europe, the more activist Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS — National Volunteer Organisation) 
emerged to protect Hinduism. The RSS had been founded in 
1925 by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar (1889-1944), a native of 
Maharashtra who was concerned that Hinduism was in danger 
of extinction from its external foes and needed a strong, mili- 
tant force of devotees to protect it. Members believe that the 
Indian nation is the divine mother to whom the citizen devotes 
mind and body through karma-yoga, or disciplined service. 
Training consists of daily early morning meetings at which the 
saffron, white, and green Indian flag and the swallow-tailed, 
red-ocher RSS banner are raised as rows of members salute 
silently. There are then group drills in gymnastic exercises, 
sports, discussions of patriotic themes from a primarily Hindu 
viewpoint, group singing of nationalist songs, and a final assem- 
bly with saluting. Throughout India in the early 1990s, there 
were cells (shakha) of fifty to 100 members from all walks of life 
(the RSS rejects class differences) who were devoted to the 
nation. Although it has attracted hundreds of thousands of 
members from all over India, the RSS has never projected itself 
as a political party, always remaining a national club that is 
ready to send its members to trouble spots for the defense of 
the nation and the national culture, embodied in Hinduism. 
The Jana Sangh, established in 1951, was the RSS's political 
arm until it joined the Janata Party in 1977 and its membership 
split away in 1980 to form the BJR 

Another activist organization is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad 
(VHP— World Hindu Council), founded in 1964. The VHP 
runs schools, medical centers, hostels, orphanages, and mass 



175 



India: A Country Study 

movements to support Hinduism wherever it is perceived as 
threatened. This ultraconservative organization played a role 
in the extensive agitation for the demolition of a mosque in 
Ayodhya, leading to the destruction of the structure during a 
huge demonstration in 1992. As a result of the VHP's complic- 
ity in the affair, the Ministry of Home Affairs imposed a two- 
year ban on the Vishwa Hindu Parishad under the Unlawful 
Activities Act. When the ban expired in December 1994, the 
government reimposed it for two additional years. 

The spread of Hindu "communal" (that is, religious) senti- 
ment parallels a similar rise in religious chauvinism and "fun- 
damentalist" ideologies among religious minorities, including 
Muslims and Sikhs. Against this background of agitation, the 
periodic outbreak of communal riots in urban areas through- 
out India contributes to an atmosphere of religious tension 
that has been a hallmark of the national political scene during 
the twentieth century. Hindu-Muslim riots, especially in North 
India, reached a peak during the partition of India in 1947 and 
periodically escalated in urban areas in the early 1990s (see 
Political Impasse and Independence, ch. 1). This strife typically 
involves low-income groups from both communities in strug- 
gles over land, jobs, or local resources that coalesced around a 
religious focus after seemingly trivial incidents polarized the 
two communities. In practice, although members of other reli- 
gious communities are the victims of violence, rioters are rarely 
motivated by religious instructors, although fundamentalist 
agitators are often implicated. The situation in North India 
became complicated during the 1980s by Sikh terrorism con- 
nected with the crisis in Punjab, the widespread anti-Sikh riots 
after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination in Novem- 
ber 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards, and a series of terrorist or 
counterterrorist actions lasting into the 1990s. In all of these 
cases, many observers believe that religion has appeared as a 
cover for political and economic struggles. 

The perception that one's religion is in danger receives peri- 
odic reinforcement from the phenomenon of public mass reli- 
gious conversion that receives coverage from the news media. 
Many of these events feature groups of Scheduled Caste mem- 
bers who attempt to escape social disabilities through conver- 
sion to alternative religions, usually Islam, Buddhism, or 
Christianity. These occasions attract the attention of funda- 
mentalist organizations from all sides and heighten public con- 
sciousness of religious divisions. The most conspicuous 



176 



Religious Life 



movement of this sort occurred during the 1950s during the 
mass conversions of Mahars to Buddhism (see Buddhism, this 
ch.)- In the early 1980s, the primary example was the conver- 
sion of Dalits to Islam in Meenakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, an 
event that resulted in considerable discussion in the media and 
an escalation of agitation in South India. Meanwhile, conver- 
sions to Christianity among tribal groups continue, with grow- 
ing opposition from Hindu revivalist organizations. 

Alongside the more publicized violent outbreaks, there have 
been major nonviolent changes, as new sectarian movements 
continue to grow and as established movements change. For 
example, the Radhasoami Satsang movement of North India, 
which includes adherents in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, encom- 
passes yogic ideas on the relationship between humans and the 
universe, the bhakti saint tradition including select Sikh influ- 
ences, and the veneration of the enlightened guru. The domi- 
nant tendency of these new religions, following the example of 
the great teachers of the past that was reiterated by Mahatma 
Gandhi and most modern gurus, remains nonviolence to all 
living beings and acceptance of the remarkable diversity of 
Indian religion. 

* * * 

Introductory sources on Hinduism include David R. Kins- 
ley's Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective and David M. Knipe's Hin- 
duism: Experiments in the Sacred. For a deeper immersion into 
the classical textual tradition, a number of books by Wendy 
Doniger O'Flaherty, including Hindu Myths: A Source Book Trans- 
lated from the Sanskrit, provide excellent translations and 
straightforward commentary. David Shulman has prepared a 
number of up-to-date translations of Tamil literature, including 
Songs of the Harsh Devotee. Lawrence A. Babb has written several 
introductions to modern Hinduism, such as The Divine Hierar- 
chy, which deals with rural life, and Redemptive Encounters, which 
discusses recent innovations, mostly among urbanites. A good 
study of pilgrimage and modern devotion, in this case in Maha- 
rashtra, is Palkhi: An Indian Pilgrimage by D.B. Mokashi. A short 
study of temples as architectural and social institutions is 
George Michell's The Hindu Temple. 

For Jainism, a good survey is Padmanabh S. Jaini's The Jaina 
Path of Purification. Historical introductions to Buddhism 
include Edward J. Thomas's The Life of Buddha as Legend and 



111 



India: A Country Study 

History, Richard H. Robinson and Willard J. Johnson's The Bud- 
dhist Religion, and Peter Harvey's An Introduction to Buddhism. 

For Islam, The Muslims of India: Beliefs and Practices edited by 
Paul Jackson provides a good overview. More detailed studies 
include Shias and Shia Islam in India, by Nadeem Nasnain and 
Abrar Husain, and Muslim Shrines in India, edited by Christian 
W. Troll. An excellent short study of modern Sufi shrines is 
Peter Van der Veer's article, "Playing or Praying: A Sufi Saint's 
Day in Surat" in the Journal of Asian Studies. 

A good starting point for Sikhism is the Sri Guru Granth 
Sahib: An Anthology translated and introduced by Gopal Singh. 
Another helpful book is W.H. McLeod's The Sikhs: History, Reli- 
gion, and Society. More recent studies of the situation in Punjab 
include Tragedy of Punjab by Kuldip Nayar and Kushwant Singh 
and Agony of Punjab by VD. Chopra, R.K. Mishra, and Nirmal 
Singh. 

Tribal belief and practice are described in R.S*. Mann and 
Vijoy S. Sahay's Nature-Man-Spirit Complex in Tribal India, J . 
Troisi's Tribal Religion, Abdesh Prasad Sinha's Religious Life in 
Tribal India, and Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf s Tribal Pop- 
ulations and Cultures of the Indian Subcontinent. The Catholic 
Bishop's Conference of India's Catholic Directory of India 
describes the modern organization of Christianity in detail, 
Lionel Caplan presents a case study of Christianity in Class and 
Culture in Urban India, and Frederick S. Downs, in Christianity in 
North East India, describes proselytization among tribal groups. 
Introductions to Zoroastrianism in India are Eckehard Kulke's 
The Parsees in India and Cyrus R. Pangborn's Zoroastrianism: A 
Beleaguered Faith. For Judaism, see Thomas A. Timberg's Jews in 
India. 

An exhaustive survey of writings on Indian religion until the 
1980s can be found in Maureen L.P. Patterson's Bibliography of 
South Asia and more recent updates in the annual Bibliography 
of Asian Studies published by the Association for Asian Studies. 
(For further information and complete citations, see Bibliogra- 
phy.) 



178 



Chapter 4. Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 



■8" • «j« 

*. /T r*h / 

y \ i / v 

ft • 

9 \ ft « « « « 



O ft * s 

ft 

• ft 

£ ft 

ft 
§ • 

o ft 



crie shells, Xagaland 



INDIA'S ETHNIC, LINGUISTIC, AND REGIONAL complexity 
sets it apart from other nations. To gain even a superficial 
understanding of the relationships governing the huge num- 
ber of ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups, the country 
should be visualized not as a nation-state but as the seat of a 
major world civilization on the scale of Europe. The popula- 
tion — estimated at 936.5 million in 1995 — is not only immense 
but also has been highly varied throughout recorded history; 
its systems of values have always encouraged diversity. The lin- 
guistic requirements of numerous former empires, an indepen- 
dent nation, and modern communication are superimposed 
on a heterogeneous sociocultural base. Almost 8 percent of the 
population, approaching 65 million people at the time of the 
1991 census, belongs to social groups recognized by the gov- 
ernment as Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary), with social struc- 
tures somewhat different from the mainstream of society. 
Powerful trends of "regionalism" — both in the sense of an 
increasing attachment to the states as opposed to the central 
government, and in the sense of movements for separation 
from the present states or greater autonomy for regions within 
them — threaten the current distribution of power and delinea- 
tion of political divisions of territory. 

Linguistic Relations 

Diversity, Use, and Policy 

The languages of India belong to four major families: Indo- 
Aryan (a branch of the Indo-European family), Dravidian, Aus- 
troasiatic (Austric), and Sino-Tibetan, with the overwhelming 
majority of the population speaking languages belonging to 
the first two families. (A fifth family, Andamanese, is spoken by 
at most a few hundred among the indigenous tribal peoples in 
the Andaman Islands, and has no agreed upon connections 
with families outside them.) The four major families are as dif- 
ferent in their form and construction as are, for example, the 
Indo-European and Semitic families. A variety of scripts are 
employed in writing the different languages. Furthermore, 
most of the more widely used Indian languages exist in a num- 
ber of different forms or dialects influenced by complex geo- 
graphic and social patterns. 



181 



India: A Country Study 



Sir George Grierson's twelve-volume Linguistic Survey of 
India, published between 1903 and 1923, identified 179 lan- 
guages and 544 dialects. The 1921 census listed 188 languages 
and forty-nine dialects. The 1961 census listed 184 "mother 
tongues," including those with fewer than 10,000 speakers. 
This census also gave a list of all the names of mother tongues 
provided by the respondents themselves; the list totals 1,652 
names. The 1981 census — the last census to tabulate lan- 
guages — reported 112 mother tongues with more than 10,000 
speakers and almost 1 million people speaking other lan- 
guages. The encyclopedic People of India series, published by 
the government's Anthropological Survey of India in the 1980s 
and early 1990s, identified seventy-five "major languages" 
within a total of 325 languages used in Indian households. In 
the early 1990s, there were thirty-two languages with 1 million 
or more speakers (see table 15, Appendix). 

The Indian constitution recognizes official languages (see 
The Constitutional Framework, ch. 8). Articles 343 through 
351 address the use of Hindi, English, and regional languages 
for official purposes, with the aim of a nationwide use of Hindi 
while guaranteeing the use of minority languages at the state 
and local levels. Hindi has been designated India's official lan- 
guage, although many impediments to its official use exist. 

The constitution's Eighth Schedule, as amended by Parlia- 
ment in 1992, lists eighteen official or Scheduled Languages 
(see Glossary). They are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, 
Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, 
Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and 
Urdu. (Precise numbers of speakers of these languages are not 
known. They were not reported in the 1991 census, and esti- 
mates are subject to considerable variation because of the use 
of multiple languages by individual speakers.) Of the official 
languages, approximately 403 million people, or about 43 per- 
cent of the estimated total 1995 population, speak Hindi as 
their mother tongue. Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, and Tamil rank 
next, each the mother tongue of about 4 to 5 percent (about 
37 million to 47 million people); Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, 
Kannada, and Oriya are claimed by between 2 and 3 percent 
(roughly 19 million to 28 million people); Bhojpuri, Punjabi, 
and Assamese by 1 to 2 percent (9 million to 19 million peo- 
ple); and all other languages by less than 1 percent (less than 9 
million speakers) each. 



182 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

Since independence in 1947, linguistic affinity has served as 
a basis for organizing interest groups; the "language question" 
itself has become an increasingly sensitive political issue. 
Efforts to reach a consensus on a single national language that 
transcends the myriad linguistic regions and is acceptable to 
diverse language communities have been largely unsuccessful. 

Many Indian nationalists originally intended that Hindi 
would replace English — the language of British rule (1757- 
1947) — as a medium of common communication. Both Hindi 
and English are extensively used, and each has its own support- 
ers. Native speakers of Hindi, who are concentrated in North 
India, contend that English, as a relic from the colonial past 
and spoken by only a small fraction of the population, is hope- 
lessly elitist and unsuitable as the nation's official language. 
Proponents of English argue, in contrast, that the use of Hindi 
is unfair because it is a liability for those Indians who do not 
speak it as their native tongue. English, they say, at least repre- 
sents an equal handicap for Indians of every region. 

English continues to serve as the language of prestige. 
Efforts to switch to Hindi or other regional tongues encounter 
stiff opposition both from those who know English well and 
whose privileged position requires proficiency in that tongue 
and from those who see it as a means of upward mobility. Parti- 
sans of English also maintain it is useful and indeed necessary 
as a link to the rest of the world, that India is lucky that the 
colonial period left a language that is now the world's predomi- 
nant international language in the fields of culture, science, 
technology, and commerce. They hold, too, that widespread 
knowledge of English is necessary for technological and eco- 
nomic progress and that reducing its role would leave India a 
backwater in world affairs. 

Linguistic diversity is apparent on a variety of levels. Major 
regional languages have stylized literary forms, often with an 
extensive body of literature, which may date back from a few 
centuries to two millennia ago. These literary languages differ 
markedly from the spoken forms and village dialects that coex- 
ist with a plethora of caste idioms and regional lingua francas 
(see Village Unity and Divisiveness, ch. 5). Part of the reason 
for such linguistic diversity lies in the complex social realities of 
South Asia. India's languages reflect the intricate levels of 
social hierarchy and caste. Individuals have in their speech rep- 
ertoire a variety of styles and dialects appropriate to various 
social situations. In general, the higher the speaker's status, the 



183 



In dm: A Co u n try St u dy 



more speech forms there are at his or her disposal. Speech is 
adapted in countless ways to reflect the specific social context 
and the relative standing of the speakers. 

Determining what should be called a language or a dialect is 
more a political than a linguistic question. Sometimes the word 
language is applied to a standardized and prestigious form, rec- 
ognized as such over a large geographic area, whereas the word 
dialect is used for the various forms of speech that lack prestige 
or that are restricted to certain regions or castes but are still 
regarded as forms of the same language. Sometimes mutual 
intelligibility is the criterion: if the speakers can understand 
each other, even though with some difficulty, they are speaking 
the same language, although thev mav speak different dialects. 
However, speakers of Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi can often 
understand each other, vet thev are regarded as speakers of dif- 
ferent languages. Whether or not one thinks Konkani — spoken 
in Goa, Karnataka, and the Konkan region of Maharashtra — is 
a distinct language or a dialect of Marathi has tended to be 
linked with whether or not one thinks Goa ought to be merged 
with Maharashtra. The question has been settled from the cen- 
tral government's point of view by making Goa a state and Kon- 
kani a Scheduled Language. Moreover, the fact that the Latin 
script is predominantly used for Konkani separates it further 
from Marathi, which uses the Devanagari (see Glossary) script. 
However, Konkani is also sometimes written in Devanagari and 
Kannada scripts. 

Regional languages are an issue in the politically charged 
atmosphere surrounding language policy. Throughout the 
1950s and 1960s, attempts were made to redraw state bound- 
aries to coincide with linguistic usa^e. Such efforts have had 
mixed results. Linguistic affinity has often failed to overcome 
other social and economic differences. In addition, most states 
have linguistic minorities, and questions surrounding the defi- 
nition and use of the official lan^ua^e in those regions are 
fraught with controversv. 

States have been accused of failure to fulfill their obligations 
under the national constitution to provide for the education of 
linguistic minorities in their mother tongues, even when the 
minority language is a Scheduled Language. Although the con- 
stitution requires that legal documents and petitions may be 
submitted in any of the Scheduled Languages to any govern- 
ment authority, this right is rarely exercised. Under such cir- 
cumstances, members of linguistic minorities may feel they and 



184 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 



their language are oppressed by the majority, while people who 
are among linguistic majorities may feel threatened by what 
some might consider minor concessions. Thus, attempts to 
make seemingly minor accommodations for social diversity 
may have extensive and volatile ramifications. For example, in 
1994 a proposal in Bangalore to introduce an Urdu-language 
television news segment (aimed primarily at Muslim viewers) 
led to a week of urban riots that left dozens dead and millions 
of dollars in property damage. 

Languages of India 

About 80 percent of all Indians — nearly 750 million people 
based on 1995 population estimates — speak one of the Indo- 
Aryan group of languages. Persian and the languages of 
Afghanistan are close relatives, belonging, like the Indo-Aryan 
languages, to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European 
family. Brought into India from the northwest during the sec- 
ond millennium B.C., the Indo-Aryan tongues spread through- 
out the north, gradually displacing the earlier languages of the 
area. 

Modern linguistic knowledge of this process of assimilation 
comes through the Sanskrit language employed in the sacred 
literature known as the Vedas (see The Vedas and Polytheism, 
ch. 3). Over a period of centuries, Indo-Aryan languages came 
to predominate in the northern and central portions of South 
Asia (see Antecedents, ch. 1). 

As Indo-Aryan speakers spread across northern and central 
India, their languages experienced constant change and devel- 
opment. By about 500 B.C., Prakrits, or "common" forms of 
speech, were widespread throughout the north. By about the 
same time, the "sacred," "polished," or "pure" tongue — San- 
skrit — used in religious rites had also developed along inde- 
pendent lines, changing significantly from the form used in the 
Vedas. However, its use in ritual settings encouraged the reten- 
tion of archaic forms lost in the Prakrits. Concerns for the 
purity and correctness of Sanskrit gave rise to an elaborate sci- 
ence of grammar and phonetics and an alphabetical system 
seen by some scholars as superior to the Roman system. By the 
fourth century B.C., these trends had culminated in the work 
of Panini, whose Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi (Eight 
Chapters), set the basic form of Sanskrit for subsequent gener- 
ations. Panini's work is often compared to Euclid's as an intel- 
lectual feat of systematization. 



185 



India: A Country Study 

The Prakrits continued to evolve through everyday use. One 
of these dialects was Pali, which was spoken in the western por- 
tion of peninsular India. Pali became the language of Thera- 
vada Buddhism; eventually it came to be identified exclusively 
with religious contexts. By around A.D. 500, the Prakrits had 
changed further into Apabhramshas, or the "decayed" speech; 
it is from these dialects that the contemporary Indo-Aryan lan- 
guages of South Asia developed. The rudiments of modern 
Indo-Aryan vernaculars were in place by about A.D. 1000 to 
1300. 

It would be misleading, however, to call Sanskrit a dead lan- 
guage because for many centuries huge numbers of works in all 
genres and on all subjects continued to be written in Sanskrit. 
Original works are still written in it, although in much smaller 
numbers than formerly. Many students still learn Sanskrit as a 
second or third language, classical music concerts regularly fea- 
ture Sanskrit vocal compositions, and there are even television 
programs conducted entirely in Sanskrit. 

Around 18 percent of the Indian populace (about 169 mil- 
lion people in 1995) speak Dravidian languages. Most Dravid- 
ian speakers reside in South India, where Indo-Aryan influence 
was less extensive than in the north. Only a few isolated groups 
of Dravidian speakers, such as the Gonds in Madhya Pradesh 
and Orissa, and the Kurukhs in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, 
remain in the north as representatives of the Dravidian speak- 
ers who presumably once dominated much more of South 
Asia. (The only other significant population of Dravidian 
speakers are the Brahuis in Pakistan.) 

The oldest documented Dravidian language is Tamil, with a 
substantial body of literature, particularly the Cankam poetry, 
going back to the first century A.D. Kannada and Telugu devel- 
oped extensive bodies of literature after the sixth century, 
while Malayalam split from Tamil as a literary language by the 
twelfth century. In spite of the profound influence of the San- 
skrit language and Sanskritic culture on the Dravidian lan- 
guages, a strong consciousness of the distinctness of Dravidian 
languages from Sanskrit remained. All four major Dravidian 
languages had consciously differentiated styles varying in the 
amount of Sanskrit they contained. In the twentieth century, as 
part of an anti-Brahman movement in Tamil Nadu, a strong 
movement arose to "purify" Tamil of its Sanskrit elements, with 
mixed success. The other three Dravidian languages were not 
much affected by this trend. 



186 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

There are smaller groups, mostly tribal peoples, who speak 
Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic languages. Sino-Tibetan speak- 
ers live along the Himalayan fringe from Jammu and Kashmir 
to eastern Assam (see fig. 9). They comprise about 1.3 percent, 
or 12 million, of India's 1995 population. The Austroasiatic lan- 
guages, composed of the Munda tongues and others thought 
to be related to them, are spoken by groups of tribal peoples 
from West Bengal through Bihar and Orissa and into Madhya 
Pradesh. These groups make up approximately 0.7 percent 
(about 6.5 million people) of the population. 

Despite the extensive linguistic diversity in India, many 
scholars treat South Asia as a single linguistic area because the 
various language families share a number of features not found 
together outside South Asia. Languages entering South Asia 
were "Indianized." Scholars cite the presence of retroflex con- 
sonants, characteristic structures in verb formations, and a sig- 
nificant amount of vocabulary in Sanskrit with Dravidian or 
Austroasiatic origin as indications of mutual borrowing, influ- 
ences, and counterinfluences. Retroflex consonants, for exam- 
ple, which are formed with the tongue curled back to the hard 
palate, appear to have been incorporated into Sanskrit and 
other Indo-Aryan languages through the medium of borrowed 
Dravidian words. 

Hindi and English 

For the speakers of the country's myriad tongues to function 
within a single administrative unit requires some medium of 
common communication. The choice of this tongue, known in 
India as the "link" language, has been a point of significant 
controversy since independence. Central government policy 
on the question has been necessarily equivocal. The vested 
interests proposing a number of language policies have made a 
decisive resolution of the "language question" all but impossi- 
ble. 

The central issue in the link-language controversy has been 
and remains whether Hindi should replace English. Propo- 
nents of Hindi as the link language assert that English is a for- 
eign tongue left over from the British Raj (see Glossary). 
English is used fluently only by a small, privileged segment of 
the population; the role of English in public life and govern- 
mental affairs constitutes an effective bar to social mobility and 
further democratization. Hindi, in this view, is not only already 
spoken by a sizable minority of all Indians but also would be 



187 



India: A Country Study 

easier to spread because it would be more congenial to the cul- 
tural habits of the people. On the other hand, Dravidian-speak- 
ing southerners in particular feel that a switch to Hindi in the 
well-paid, nationwide bureaucracies, such as the Indian Admin- 
istrative Service, the military, and other forms of national ser- 
vice would give northerners an unfair advantage in gov- 
ernment examinations (see The Civil Service, ch. 8). If the 
learning of English is burdensome, they argue, at least the bur- 
den weighs equally on Indians from all parts of the country. In 
the meantime, an increasing percentage of Indians send their 
children to private English-medium schools, to help assure 
their offspring a chance at high-privilege positions in business, 
education, the professions, and government. 

Hindi 

The development of Hindi and Urdu gives a glimpse of the 
processes at work in language evolution in South Asia. 

Hindi and Urdu are essentially one language with two 
scripts, Devanagari and Persian-Arabic, respectively. In their 
most formal literary forms, the two languages have two vocabu- 
laries (Hindi taking words by preference from Sanskrit, Urdu 
from Persian and Arabic) and tend to be culturally connected 
with Hindu and Islamic culture, respectively. Hindi-Urdu devel- 
oped from the Khari Boli dialect of Delhi, the capital city of the 
Delhi Sultanate, and it was the speech of the classes and neigh- 
borhoods most closely connected with the Mughal court 
(1556-1858). In time, the language spread even into South 
India because it served as a common medium of communica- 
tion for trade, administration, and military purposes. Classical 
Urdu appropriated a large number of words from Persian, the 
official language of the Mughal Empire, and through Persian 
from Arabic. 

By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Urdu 
had developed into a highly stylized form written in a Persian- 
Arabic script. After the British took over from the Mughals, 
whose language of administration was Persian, Urdu began to 
serve as the language of administration in lower courts in the 
north. British administrators and missionaries, however, felt 
that the high literary form of Urdu was too remote from every- 
day life and was suffused by a Persian vocabulary unintelligible 
to the masses. Therefore, they instigated the development of 
modern standard Hindi in Devanagari script. Hindi now pre- 
dominates in a number of states, including Uttar Pradesh, 



188 



ll 



A 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Himachal 
Pradesh, and in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Urdu 
is the majority language in no large region but is more com- 
monly spoken in North India and is the official administrative 
language of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. In South India, 
people in urban Muslim communities in former administrative 
capitals, such as Hyderabad or Bangalore, may regularly use 
Urdu at home or in their workplace. 

Hindi has spread throughout North India as a contemporary 
lingua franca. Its speakers range from illiterate workers in large 
cities to highly educated civil servants. Many city dwellers learn 
Hindi as a second or third language even if they speak another 
regional language, such as Marathi, Bengali, or Gujarati. As 
professionals have become increasingly mobile, they rely more 
heavily on Hindi as a means of communication; those aspiring 
to career advancement need to learn standard Hindi. Speakers 
of other Indo-Aryan languages tend to chose Hindi for their 
third language in school because of similarities in grammar, 
vocabulary, or script with their own mother tongue and 
because it has a wider use than another regional language. 

Hindi, especially in the less highly Sanskritized form used in 
everyday speech, is barely distinct from everyday Urdu, which 
before independence was called Hindustani. However, Hindi 
has long had pan-Indian uses extending beyond the regions 
where it is the majority language. Hindi is the lingua franca at 
pilgrimage sites in all regions and is used to deal with devotees 
from all parts of the country. It is also the common means of 
communication of wandering Hindu holy men in their discus- 
sions with each other and is used frequently in preaching. 
Many publishers issue Sanskrit classics on religion, astrology, 
medicine, and other subjects with Hindi translations, cribs, or 
commentaries to help purchasers who may not be confident of 
their Sanskrit ability. Purchasers appear to find those aids use- 
ful, even though Hindi may not be their primary spoken or 
written language. Although there are major cinema industries 
in several other languages, the Hindi cinema (centered in 
Bombay, also known as Mumbai in the Marathi language) dom- 
inates the Indian motion picture market, and Hindi films (the 
songs tend to be in Urdu) are shown around the country with- 
out subtitles or dubbing (see The Media, ch. 8). 

A number of former literary languages with established and 
major bodies of literature, such as Braj, Avadhi, and Maithili, 
have been essentially subsumed under the rubric of Hindi. 



191 




Source: Based on information from Francis Robinson, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhv 
Cambridge, 1989, 404;S. Muthiah, ed., A Socialand Economic Atlas of India, Delhi, 1992, 39; andjoseph E. Schwartzberg, ed.,AH 
Asia, New York, 1992, 102. 

Figure 9. Principal Languages by State and Union Territory 



190 



India: A Country Study 

Maithili, spoken in northern Bihar, has a body of literature and 
its own grammar. Proponents of its use insist that it is a lan- 
guage in its own right and that it is related more closely to east- 
ern Indo-Aryan tongues than to Hindi. Nonetheless, efforts to 
revive Maithili have had minimal success beyond its use in ele- 
mentary education. Other regional tongues that lack literary 
forms, such as Marwari (in Rajasthan) and Magadhi (in south- 
ern Bihar), are considered variants of Hindi. Some of them dif- 
fer from Hindi considerably more than does Urdu. In general, 
religious affiliation is the distinguishing characteristic of Hindi 
and Urdu speakers; Muslims speak Urdu, and Hindus speak 
Hindi, although what they actually say in informal situations is 
likely to be about the same. The use of two radically different 
scripts is a statement of cultural identity. However, there are 
still Hindu religious periodicals published in Urdu, and Urdu 
writers who are Hindu by religion. 

English 

There is little information on the extent of knowledge of 
English in India. Books and articles abound on the place of 
English in the Indian education system, job competition, and 
culture; and on its sociolinguistic aspects, pronunciation and 
grammar, its effect on Indian languages, and Indian literature 
in English. Little information is available, however, on the 
number of people who "know" English and the extent of their 
knowledge, or even how many people study English in school. 
In the 1981 census, 202,400 persons (0.3 percent of the popula- 
tion) gave English as their first language. Fewer than 1 percent 
gave English as their second language while 14 percent were 
reported as bilingual in two of India's many languages. How- 
ever, the census did not allow for recording more than one sec- 
ond language and is suspected of having significantly 
underrepresented bilingualism and multilingualism. 

The 1981 census reported 13.3 percent of the population as 
bilingual. The People of India project of the Anthropological 
Survey of India, which assembled statistics on communities 
rather than on individuals, found that only 34 percent of com- 
munities reported themselves as monolingual. An Assamese 
who also knew Bengali, or someone from a Marathi-speaking 
family living in Delhi who attended a Hindi-medium school, 
might give Bengali or Hindi as his or her second language but 
also know English from formal school instruction or picking it 
up on the street. It is suspected that many people identify lan- 



192 



6H£lfl$b 

63>6M&dt>6Hlb. 

TO SHOE 

nYRiisTHND 

Q2J(^go)(aQiajStecB» 



• 



A temple entrance sign, 
Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu. It 
includes instructions in Tamil, 
English, Hindi, Telugu, 
Kannada, and Malay alam. 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



guage with literacy and hence will not describe themselves as 
knowing a language unless they can read it and, conversely, 
may say they know a language if they can make out its alphabet. 
Thus people who speak English but are unable to read or write 
it may say they do not know the language. 

English-language daily newspapers have a circulation of 3.1 
million copies per day, but each copy is probably read by sev- 
eral people. There are estimates of about 3 percent (some 27 
million people) for the number of literates in English, but even 
if this percentage is valid, the number of people with a speak- 
ing knowledge is certainly higher than of those who read it. 
And, the figure of 3 percent for English literacy may be low. 
According to one set of figures, 17.6 million people were 
enrolled in English classes in 1977, which would be 3.2 percent 
of the population of India according to the 1971 census. Tak- 
ing the most conservative evaluation of how much of the 
instruction would "stick," this still leaves a larger part of the 
population than 3 percent with some English literacy. 

Some idea of the possibilities of studying English can be 
found in the 1992 Fifth All-India Education Survey. According 
to the survey, only 1.3 percent of primary schools, 3.4 percent 
of upper primary schools, 3.9 percent of middle schools, and 
13.2 percent of high schools use English as a medium of 
instruction. Schools treating English as the first language 



193 



India: A Country Study 

(requiring ten years of study) are only 0.6 percent of rural pri- 
mary schools, 2.8 percent of rural high schools, and 9.9 per- 
cent of urban high schools. English is offered as a second 
language (six years of study) in 51 percent of rural primary 
schools, 55 percent of urban primary schools, 57 percent of 
rural high schools, and 51 percent of urban high schools. As a 
third language (three years of study), English is offered in 5 
percent of rural primary schools, 21 percent of urban primary 
schools, 44 percent of rural high schools, and 41 percent of 
urban high schools. These statistics show a considerable desire 
to study English among people receiving a mostly vernacular 
education, even in the countryside. 

In higher education, English continues to be the premier 
prestige language. Careers in business and commerce, govern- 
ment positions of high rank (regardless of stated policy), and 
science and technology (attracting many of the brightest) con- 
tinue to require fluency in English. It is also necessary for the 
many students who contemplate study overseas. 

English as a prestige language and the tongue of first choice 
continues to serve as the medium of instruction in elite schools 
at every level without apology. All large cities and many smaller 
cities have private, English-language middle schools and high 
schools (see Education, ch. 2). Even government schools run 
for the benefit of senior civil service officers are conducted in 
English because only that language is an acceptable medium of 
communication throughout the nation. 

Working-class parents, themselves rural-urban migrants and 
perhaps bilingual in their village dialect and the regional stan- 
dard language, perceive English as the tool their children need 
in order to advance. Schools in which English is the medium of 
instruction are a "growth industry." Facility in English 
enhances a young woman's chances in the marriage market — 
no small advantage in the often protracted marriage negotia- 
tions between families (see Life Passages, ch. 5). The English 
speaker also encounters more courteous responses in some sit- 
uations than does a speaker of an indigenous language. 

Linguistic States 

The constitution and various other government documents 
are purposely vague in defining such terms as national lan- 
guages and official languages and in distinguishing either one 
from officially adopted regional languages. States are free to 
adopt their own language of administration and educational 



194 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

instruction from among the country's officially recognized lan- 
guages, the Scheduled Languages. Further, all citizens have the 
right to primary education in their native tongue, although the 
constitution does not stipulate how this objective is to be 
accomplished. 

As drafted, the constitution provided that Hindi and English 
were to be the languages of communication for the central gov- 
ernment until 1965, when the switch to Hindi was mandated. 
The Official Languages Act of 1963, pursuing this mandate, 
said that Hindi would become the sole official national lan- 
guage in 1965. English, however, would continue as an "associ- 
ate additional official language." After ten years, a parlia- 
mentary committee was to consider the situation and whether 
the status of English should continue if the knowledge of Hindi 
among peoples of other native languages had not progressed 
sufficiently. The act, however, was ambiguous about whether 
Hindi could be imposed on unwilling states by 1975. In 1964 
the Ministry of Home Affairs requested all central ministries to 
state their progress on the switch to Hindi and their plans for 
the period after the transition date in 1965. The news of this 
directive led to massive riots and self-immolations in Tamil 
Nadu in late 1964 and early 1965, leading the central govern- 
ment, then run by the Congress (see Glossary), to back away 
from its stand. A conference of Congress leaders, cabinet min- 
isters, and chief ministers of all the states was held in New Delhi 
in June 1965. Non-Hindi-speaking states were assured that 
Hindi would not be imposed as the sole language of communi- 
cation between the central government and the states as long 
as even one state objected. In addition any of the Scheduled 
Languages could be used in taking examinations for entry into 
the central government services. 

Before independence in 1947, the Congress was committed 
to redrawing state boundaries to correspond with linguistics. 
The States Reorganisation Commission, which was formed in 
1953 to study the problems involved in redrawing state bound- 
aries, viewed language as an important, although by no means 
the sole, factor. Other factors, such as economic viability and 
geographic realities, had to be taken into account. The com- 
mission issued its report in 1955; the government's request for 
comments from the populace generated a flood of petitions 
and letters. The final bill, passed in 1956 and amended several 
times in the 1960s, by no means resolved even the individual 
states' linguistic problems. 



195 



India: A Country Study 

Even regions with a long history of agitation for a linguistic 
state sometimes have found the actual transition less than 
smooth. For example, proponents began lobbying for a Te- 
lugu-speaking state in the early twentieth century. In 1956 the 
central government formed a single state, Andhra Pradesh, 
composed of the predominantly Telugu-speaking parts of what 
in British India had been the Madras Presidency and the large 
polyglot princely state of Hyderabad. Although more than 80 
percent of the residents (some 53 million people as of 1991) of 
Andhra Pradesh speak Telugu, like most linguistic states it has 
a sizable linguistic minority. In this case, the minority consists 
of Urdu speakers centered in the state's capital, Hyderabad, 
where nearly 40 percent (some 1.7 million people in 1991) of 
the population speak that language. Linguistic affinity did not 
form a firm basis for unity between the two regions from which 
the state had been formed because they were separated by cul- 
tural and economic differences. Although there were riots in 
the late 1960s and early 1970s in support of the formation of 
two separate states, the separation did not occur. 

The violence that broke out in the state of Assam in the early 
1980s reflected the complexities of linguistic and ethnic poli- 
tics in South Asia (see Political Issues, ch. 8). The state has a 
significant number of Bengali-speaking Muslims — immigrants 
and their descendants who began settling the region in the late 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Muslims came in 
response to a British-initiated colonization plan to bring under 
cultivation land left fallow by the Assamese. By the 1931 census, 
the Assamese not only had lost a hefty portion of their land but 
also had become a disadvantaged minority in their traditional 
homeland. They represented less than 33 percent of the total 
population of Assam, and the Muslim immigrants (who 
accounted for roughly 25 percent of the population) domi- 
nated commerce and the government bureaucracy. 

Assamese-Bengali rioting started in 1950, and in the 1951 
census many Bengalis listed Assamese as their native tongue in 
an effort to placate the Assamese. Further immigration of Ben- 
gali speakers after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971 and a 
resurgence of pro-Bengali feeling among earlier immigrants 
and their descendants reawakened Assamese fears of being out- 
numbered. Renewed violence in the early and mid-1980s was 
sufficiently serious for the central government to avoid holding 
general elections in Assam during December 1984 (see Insur- 
gent Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). 



196 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

The Social Context of Language 

Contemporary languages and dialects, as they figure in the 
lives of most Indians, are a far cry from the stylized literary 
forms of Indo-Aryan or Dravidian languages. North India espe- 
cially can be viewed as a continuum of village dialects. As a 
proverb has it, "Every two miles the water changes, every four 
miles the speech." Spoken dialects of more distant villages will 
be less and less mutually understandable and finally become 
simply mutually unintelligible outside the immediate region. 
In some cases, a variety of caste dialects coexist in the same vil- 
lage or region. In addition, there are numerous regional dia- 
lects that villagers use when doing business in nearby towns or 
bazaars. 

Since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, 
regional languages, such as Bengali, Punjabi, and Marathi, 
have become relatively standardized and are now used 
throughout their respective states for most levels of administra- 
tion, business, and social intercourse. Each is associated with a 
body of literature. British rule was an impetus for the official 
codification of these regional tongues. British colonial adminis- 
trators and missionaries learned regional languages and often 
studied their literatures, and their translations of English-lan- 
guage materials and the Bible encouraged the development of 
written, standard languages. To provide teaching materials, 
prose compositions, grammars, and textbooks were often com- 
missioned and, in some cases, were closer to everyday speech 
than was the standard literary language. Industrialization, 
modernization, and printing gave a major boost to the vocabu- 
lary and standardization of regional tongues, especially by mak- 
ing possible the wide dissemination of dictionaries. 

Such written forms still often differ widely from spoken ver- 
naculars and village dialects. Diglossia — the coexistence of a 
highly elaborate, formal language alongside a more colloquial 
form of the same tongue — occurs in many instances. For exam- 
ple, spoken Bengali is so divergent from written Bengali as to 
be nearly another tongue. Similarly, Telugu scholars waged a 
bitter battle in the early twentieth century over proper lan- 
guage style. Reformers favored a simplified prose format for 
written Telugu, while traditional classicists wished to continue 
using a classical literary poetic form. In the end, the classicists 
won, although a more colloquial written form eventually began 
to appear in the mass media. Diglossia reinforces social barri- 



197 



India: A Country Study 

ers because only a fraction of the populace is sufficiently edu- 
cated to master the more literary form of the language. 

The standard regional language may be the household 
tongue of only a small group of educated inhabitants of the 
region's major urban center that has long exercised politico- 
economic hegemony in a region. Even literate villagers may 
have difficulty understanding it. The more socially isolated — 
women and Dalits (see Glossary) — tend to be more parochial 
in their speech than people of higher caste, who are often able 
to use a colloquial form of the regional dialect, the caste patois, 
and the regional standard dialect. An educated person may 
master several different speech forms that are often so differ- 
ent as to be considered separate languages. Western-educated 
scholars may well use the regional standard language mixed 
with English vocabulary with their colleagues at work. At home, 
a man may switch to a more colloquial vernacular, particularly 
if his wife is uneducated. Even the highly educated frequently 
communicate in their village dialects at home. 

Only around 3 percent of the population (about 28 million 
people in 1995) is truly fluent in both English and an Indian 
language. By necessity, a substantial minority are able to speak 
two Indian languages; even in the so-called linguistic states, 
there are minorities who do not speak the official language as 
their native tongue and must therefore learn it as a second lan- 
guage. Many tribal people are bilingual. Rural-urban migrants 
are frequently bilingual in the regional standard language as 
well as in their village dialect. In Bombay, for example, many 
migrants speak Hindi or Marathi in addition to their native 
tongue. Religious celebrations, popular festivals, and political 
meetings are typically carried on in the regional language, 
which may be unintelligible to many attendees. Bilingualism in 
India, however, is inextricably linked to social context. South 
Asia's long history of foreign rule has fostered what Clarence 
Maloney terms "the linguistic flight of the elite." Language — 
either Sanskrit, Persian, or English — has formed a barrier to 
advancement that only a few have been fortunate enough to 
overcome. 

Throughout the twentieth century, radio, television, and the 
print media have fostered standardization of regional dialects, 
if only to facilitate communication. Linguistic standardization 
has contributed to ethnic or regional differentiation insofar as 
language has served as a cultural marker. Mass communication 
forces the adoption of a single standard regional tongue; typi- 



198 




Graffiti protesting the use of Hindi, Madras, Tamil Nadu 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

cally, the choice is the dialect of the majority in the region or of 
the region's preeminent business or cultural center. The use of 
less standard forms clearly labels speakers outside their imme- 
diate home base. To fulfill its purposes, the regional language 
must be standardized and taught to an increasing percentage 
of the population, thereby encroaching both on its own dia- 
lects and the minority languages of the region. The language 
of instruction and administration affects the economic and 
career interests and the self-respect of an ever-greater propor- 
tion of the population. 

Ethnic Minorities 
Tribes 

Composition and Location 

Tribal peoples constitute roughly 8 percent of the nation's 
total population, nearly 68 million people according to the 
1991 census. One concentration lives in a belt along the Hima- 
layas stretching through Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal 
Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh in the west, to Assam, Meghalaya, 
Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland 



199 



India: A Country Study 

in the northeast (see fig. 1). Another concentration lives in the 
hilly areas of central India (Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and, to a 
lesser extent, Andhra Pradesh); in this belt, which is bounded 
by the Narmada River to the north and the Godavari River to 
the southeast, tribal peoples occupy the slopes of the region's 
mountains. Other tribals, the Santals, live in Bihar and West 
Bengal. There are smaller numbers of tribal people in Karna- 
taka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, in western India in Gujarat and 
Rajasthan, and in the union territories of Lakshadweep and the 
Andaman and Nicobar Islands. 

The extent to which a state's population is tribal varies con- 
siderably. In the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, 
Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland, upward of 90 percent of 
the population is tribal. However, in the remaining northeast 
states of Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, and Tripura, tribal peoples 
form between 20 and 30 percent of the population. The largest 
tribes are found in central India, although the tribal popula- 
tion there accounts for only around 10 percent of the region's 
total population. Major concentrations of tribal people live in 
Maharashtra, Orissa, and West Bengal. In the south, about 1 
percent of the populations of Kerala and Tamil Nadu are tribal, 
whereas about 6 percent in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are 
members of tribes. 

There are some 573 communities recognized by the govern- 
ment as Scheduled Tribes and therefore eligible to receive spe- 
cial benefits and to compete for reserved seats in legislatures 
and schools. They range in size from the Gonds (roughly 7.4 
million) and the Santals (approximately 4.2 million) to only 
eighteen Chaimals in the Andaman Islands. Central Indian 
states have the country's largest tribes, and, taken as a whole, 
roughly 75 percent of the total tribal population live there. 

Apart from the use of strictly legal criteria, however, the 
problem of determining which groups and individuals are 
tribal is both subtle and complex. Because it concerns eco- 
nomic interests and the size and location of voting blocs, the 
question of who are members of Scheduled Tribes rather than 
Backward Classes (see Glossary) or Scheduled Castes (see Glos- 
sary) is often controversial (see The Fringes of Society, ch. 5). 
The apparently wide fluctuation in estimates of South Asia's 
tribal population through the twentieth century gives a sense 
of how unclear the distinction between tribal and nontribal can 
be. India's 1931 census enumerated 22 million tribal people, in 
1941 only 10 million were counted, but by 1961 some 30 mil- 



200 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

lion and in 1991 nearly 68 million tribal members were 
included. The differences among the figures reflect changing 
census criteria and the economic incentives individuals have to 
maintain or reject classification as a tribal member. 

These gyrations of census data serve to underline the com- 
plex relationship between caste and tribe. Although, in theory, 
these terms represent different ways of life and ideal types, in 
reality they stand for a continuum of social groups. In areas of 
substantial contact between tribes and castes, social and cul- 
tural pressures have often tended to move tribes in the direc- 
tion of becoming castes over a period of years. Tribal peoples 
with ambitions for social advancement in Indian society at 
large have tried to gain the classification of caste for their 
tribes; such efforts conform to the ancient Indian traditions of 
caste mobility (see Caste and Class, ch. 5). Where tribal leaders 
prospered, they could hire Brahman priests to construct credi- 
ble pedigrees and thereby join reasonably high-status castes. 
On occasion, an entire tribe or part of a tribe joined a Hindu 
sect and thus entered the caste system en masse. If a specific 
tribe engaged in practices that Hindus deemed polluting, the 
tribe's status when it was assimilated into the caste hierarchy 
would be affected. 

Since independence, however, the special benefits available 
to Scheduled Tribes have convinced many groups, even Hin- 
dus and Muslims, that they will enjoy greater advantages if so 
designated. The schedule gives tribal people incentives to 
maintain their identity. By the same token, the schedule also 
includes a number of groups whose "tribal" status, in cultural 
terms, is dubious at best; in various districts, the list includes 
Muslims and a congeries of Hindu castes whose main claim 
seems to be their ability to deliver votes to the party that 
arranges their listing among the Scheduled Tribes. 

A number of traits have customarily been seen as establish- 
ing tribal rather than caste identity. These include language, 
social organization, religious affiliation, economic patterns, 
geographic location, and self-identification. Recognized tribes 
typically live in hilly regions somewhat remote from caste settle- 
ments; they generally speak a language recognized as tribal. 

Unlike castes, which are part of a complex and interrelated 
local economic exchange system, tribes tend to form self-suffi- 
cient economic units. Often they practice swidden farming — 
clearing a field by slash-and-burn methods, planting it for a 
number of seasons, and then abandoning it for a lengthy fallow 



201 



India : A Co u n try St u dy 



period — rather than the intensive farming typical of most of 
rural India (see Land Use. ch. 7). For most tribal people., land- 
use rights traditionally derive simply from tribal membership. 
Tribal society tends to be egalitarian, its leadership being based 
on ties of kinship and personality rather than on hereditary sta- 
tus. Tribes typically consist of segmentary lineages whose 
extended families provide the basis for social organization and 
control. Unlike caste religion, which recognizes the hegemony 
of Brahman priests, tribal religion recognizes no authority out- 
side the tribe. 

Any of these criteria can be called into question in specific 
instances. Lan2"ua°;e is not always an accurate indicator of tribal 
or caste status. Especially in regions of mixed population, many 
tribal groups have lost their mother tongues and simply speak 
local or resdonal languages. Linguistic assimilation is an on°;o- 
ing process of considerable complexity In the highlands of 
Orissa, for example, the Bondos — a Munda-language-speaking 
tribe — use their own tonsrue among themselves. Oriva. how- 
ever, serves as a lingua franca in dealings with Hindu neigh- 
bors. Oriva as a prestige language (in the Bondo view), 
however, has also supplanted the native tongue as the language 
of ritual. In parts of Assam, historically divided into warring 
tribes and villages, increased contact amon? villagers began 
during the colonial period and has accelerated since indepen- 
dence. A pidgin Assamese developed while educated tribal 
members learned Hindi and. in the late twentieth century. 
English. 

Self-identification and group loyalty are not unfailing mark- 
ers of tribal identity either. In the case of stratified tribes, the 
loyalties of clan, kin, and family may well predominate over 
those of tribe. In addition, tribes cannot always be viewed as 
people living apart: the degree of isolation of various tribes has 
varied tremendously The Gonds, Santals. and Bhils tradition- 
ally have dominated the regions in which they have lived. 
Moreover, tribal society is not always more egalitarian than the 
rest of the rural populace: some of the larger tribes, such as the 
Gonds. are highly stratified. 

Economic and Political Conditions 

Most tribes are concentrated in heavilv forested areas that 
combine inaccessibility with limited political or economic sig- 
nificance. Historically the economy of most tribes was subsis- 
tence agriculture or hunting and Catherine. Tribal members 



202 



A painter of the Warli tribe, 
Maharashtra 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



traded with outsiders for the few necessities they lacked, such 
as salt and iron. A few local Hindu craftsmen might provide 
such items as cooking utensils. The twentieth century, however, 
has seen far-reaching changes in the relationship between trib- 
als and the larger society and, by extension, traditional tribal 
economies. Improved transportation and communications 
have brought ever deeper intrusions into tribal lands; mer- 
chants and a variety of government policies have involved tribal 
peoples more thoroughly in the cash economy, although by no 
means on the most favorable of terms. Large areas fell into the 
hands of nontribals around 1900, when many regions were 
opened by the government to homestead-style settlement. 
Immigrants received free land in return for cultivating it. 
Tribal people, too, could apply for land titles, although even 
title to the portion of land they happened to be planting that 
season could not guarantee their ability to continue swidden 
cultivation. More important, the notion of permanent, individ- 
ual ownership of land was foreign to most tribals. Land, if seen 
in terms of ownership at all, was viewed as a communal 
resource, free to whoever needed it. By the time tribals 
accepted the necessity of obtaining formal land titles, they had 
lost the opportunity to lay claim to lands that might rightfully 
have been considered theirs. Generally, tribals were severely 
disadvantaged in dealing with government officials who 



203 



India: A Country Study 



granted land titles. Albeit belatedly, the colonial regime real- 
ized the necessity of protecting tribals from the predations of 
outsiders and prohibited the sale of tribal lands. Although an 
important loophole in the form of land leases was left open, 
tribes made some gains in the mid-twentieth century. Despite 
considerable obstruction by local police and land officials, who 
were slow to delineate tribal holdings and slower still to offer 
police protection, some land was returned to tribal peoples. 

In the 1970s, the gains tribal peoples had made in earlier 
decades were eroded in many regions, especially in central 
India. Migration into tribal lands increased dramatically, and 
the deadly combination of constabulary and revenue officers 
uninterested in tribal welfare and sophisticated nontribals will- 
ing and able to bribe local officials was sufficient to deprive 
many tribals of their landholdings. The means of subverting 
protective legislation were legion: local officials could be per- 
suaded to ignore land acquisition by nontribal people, alter 
land registry records, lease plots of land for short periods and 
then simplv refuse to relinquish them, or induce tribal mem- 
bers to become indebted and attach their lands. Whatever the 
means, the result was that many tribal members became land- 
less laborers in the 1960s and 1970s, and regions that a few 
years earlier had been the exclusive domain of tribes had an 
increasingly heterogeneous population. Unlike previous eras 
in which tribal people were shunted into more remote forests, 
by the 1960s relatively little unoccupied land was available. 
Government efforts to evict nontribal members from illegal 
occupation have proceeded slowly; when evictions occur at all, 
those ejected are usually members of poor, lower castes. In a 
1985 publication, anthropologist Christoph von Furer-Haimen- 
dorf describes this process in Andhra Pradesh: on average only 
25 to 33 percent of the tribal families in such villages had man- 
aged to keep even a portion of their holdings. Outsiders had 
paid about 5 percent of the market value of the lands they 
took. 

Improved communications, roads with motorized traffic, 
and more frequent government intervention figured in the 
increased contact that tribal peoples had with outsiders. Tribes 
fared best where there was little to induce nontribals to settle: 
cash crops and commercial highways frequently signaled the 
dismemberment of the tribes. Merchants have long been a link 
to the outside world, but in the past they were generally petty 
traders, and the contact thev had with tribal people was tran- 



204 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

sient. By the 1960s and 1970s, the resident nontribal shop- 
keeper was a permanent feature of many villages. Shopkeepers 
often sold liquor on credit, enticing tribal members into debt 
and into mortgaging their land. In the past, tribes made up 
shortages before harvest by foraging from the surrounding for- 
est. More recently shopkeepers have offered ready credit — with 
the proviso that loans be repaid in kind with 50 to 100 percent 
interest after harvest. Repaying one bag of millet with two bags 
has set up a cycle of indebtedness from which many have been 
unable to break loose. 

The possibility of cultivators growing a profitable cash crop, 
such as cotton or castor-oil plants, continues to draw merchants 
into tribal areas. Nontribal traders frequently establish an 
extensive network of relatives and associates as shopkeepers to 
serve as agents in a number of villages. Cultivators who grow a 
cash crop often sell to the same merchants, who provide con- 
sumption credit throughout the year. The credit carries a high- 
interest price tag, whereas the tribal peoples' crops are bought 
at a fraction of the market rate. Cash crops offer a further dis- 
advantage in that they decrease the supply of available food- 
stuffs and increase tribal dependence on economic forces 
beyond their control. This transformation has meant a decline 
in both the tribes' security and their standard of living. 

In previous generations, families might have purchased sil- 
ver jewelry as a form of security; contemporary tribal people 
are more likely to buy minor consumer goods. Whereas jewelry 
could serve as collateral in critical emergencies, current pur- 
chases simply increase indebtedness. In areas where gathering 
forest products is remunerative, merchants exchange their 
products for tribal labor. Indebtedness is so extensive that 
although such transactions are illegal, traders sometimes "sell" 
their debtors to other merchants, much like indentured ser- 
vants. 

In some instances, tribes have managed to hold their own in 
contacts with outsiders. Some Chenchus, a hunting and gather- 
ing tribe of the central hill regions of Andhra Pradesh, have 
continued to specialize in collecting forest products for sale. 
Caste Hindus living among them rent land from the Chenchus 
and pay a portion of the harvest. The Chenchus themselves 
have responded unenthusiastically to government efforts to 
induce them to take up farming. Their relationship to non- 
tribal people has been one of symbiosis, although there were 
indications in the early 1980s that other groups were beginning 



205 



India: A Country Study 

to compete with the Chenchus in gathering forest products. A 
large paper mill was cutting bamboo in their territory in a man- 
ner that did not allow regeneration, and two groups had begun 
to collect for sale the same products the Chenchus sell. Dalits 
settled among them with the help of the Chenchus and 
learned agriculture from them. The nomadic Banjara herders 
who graze their cattle in the forest also have been allotted land 
there. The Chenchus have a certain advantage in dealing with 
caste Hindus; because of their long association with Hindu her- 
mits and their refusal to eat beef, they are considered an unpol- 
luted caste. Other tribes, particularly in South India, have 
cultural practices that are offensive to Hindus and, when they 
are assimilated, are often considered Dalits. 

The final blow for some tribes has come when nontribals, 
through politica l jockeying, have managed to gain legal tribal 
status, that is, to be listed as a Scheduled Tribe. The Gonds of 
Andhra Pradesh effectively lost their only advantage in trying 
to protect their lands when the Banjaras, a group that had been 
settling in Gond territory, were classified as a Scheduled Tribe 
in 1977. Their newly acquired tribal status made the Banjaras 
eligible to acquire Gond land "legally" and to compete with 
Gonds for reserved political seats, places in education institu- 
tions, and other benefits. Because the Banjaras are not sched- 
uled in neighboring Maharashtra, there has been an influx of 
Banjara emigrants from that state into Andhra Pradesh in 
search of better opportunities. 

Tribes in the Himalayan foothills have not been as hard- 
pressed by the intrusions of nontribals. Historically, their politi- 
cal status was always distinct from the rest of India. Until the 
British colonial period, there was little effective control by any 
of the empires centered in peninsular India; the region was 
populated by autonomous feuding tribes. The British, in 
efforts to protect the sensitive northeast frontier, followed a 
policy dubbed the "Inner Line"; nontribal people were allowed 
into the areas only with special permission. Postindependence 
governments have continued the policy, protecting the Hima- 
layan tribes as part of the strategy to secure the border with 
China (see Principal Regions, ch. 2). 

This policy has generally saved the northern tribes from the 
kind of exploitation that those elsewhere in South Asia have 
suffered. In Arunachal Pradesh (formerly part of the North- 
East Frontier Agency), for example, tribal members control 
commerce and most lower-level administrative posts. Govern- 



206 




Young Khond tribal women, Orissa 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 

ment construction projects in the region have provided tribes 
with a significant source of cash — both for setting up busi- 
nesses and for providing paying customers. Some tribes have 
made rapid progress through the education system. Instruction 
was begun in Assamese but was eventually changed to Hindi; by 
the early 1980s, English was taught at most levels. Both educa- 
tion and the increase in ready cash from government spending 
have permitted tribal people a significant measure of social 
mobility. The role of early missionaries in providing education 
was also crucial in Assam. 

Government policies on forest reserves have affected tribal 
peoples profoundly. Wherever the state has chosen to exploit 
forests, it has seriously undermined the tribes' way of life. Gov- 
ernment efforts to reserve forests have precipitated armed (if 
futile) resistance on the part of the tribal peoples involved. 
Intensive exploitation of forests has often meant allowing out- 
siders to cut large areas of trees (while the original tribal inhab- 
itants were restricted from cutting), and ultimately replacing 
mixed forests capable of sustaining tribal life with single-prod- 
uct plantations. Where forests are reserved, nontribals have 
proved far more sophisticated than their forest counterparts at 
bribing the necessary local officials to secure effective (if extra- 



207 



India: A Country Study 



legal) use of forestlands. The system of bribing local officials 
charged with enforcing the reserves is so well established that 
the rates of bribery are reasonably fixed (by the number of 
plows a farmer uses or the amount of grain harvested). Tribal 
people often end up doing unpaid work for Hindus simply 
because a caste Hindu, who has paid the requisite bribe, can at 
least ensure a tribal member that he or she will not be evicted 
from forestlands. The final irony, notes von Furer-Haimendorf, 
is that the swidden cultivation many tribes practiced had main- 
tained South Asia's forests, whereas the intensive cultivating 
and commercial interests that replaced the tribal way of life 
have destroyed the forests (see Forestry, ch. 7). 

Extending the system of primary education into tribal areas 
and reserving places for tribal children in middle and high 
schools and higher education institutions are central to gov- 
ernment policy, but efforts to improve a tribe's educational sta- 
tus have had mixed results (see Education, ch. 2). Recruitment 
of qualified teachers and determination of the appropriate lan- 
guage of instruction also remain troublesome. Commission 
after commission on the "language question" has called for 
instruction, at least at the primary level, in the students' native 
tongue. In some regions, tribal children entering school must 
begin by learning the official regional language, often one 
completely unrelated to their tribal tongue. The experiences of 
the Gonds of Andhra Pradesh provide an example. Primary 
schooling began there in the 1940s and 1950s. The govern- 
ment selected a group of Gonds who had managed to become 
semiliterate in Telugu and taught them the basics of written 
script. These individuals became teachers who taught in Gondi, 
and their efforts enjoyed a measure of success until the 1970s, 
when state policy demanded instruction in Telugu. The switch 
in the language of instruction both made the Gond teachers 
superfluous because they could not teach in Telugu and also 
presented the government with the problem of finding reason- 
ably qualified teachers willing to teach in outlying tribal 
schools. 

The commitment of tribes to acquiring a formal education 
for their children varies considerably. Tribes differ in the 
extent to which they view education positively. Gonds and Par- 
dhans, two groups in the central hill region, are a case in point. 
The Gonds are cultivators, and they frequently are reluctant to 
send their children to school, needing them, they say, to work 
in the fields. The Pardhans were traditionally bards and ritual 



208 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

specialists, and they have taken to education with enthusiasm. 
The effectiveness of educational policy likewise varies by 
region. In those parts of the northeast where tribes have gener- 
ally been spared the wholesale onslaught of outsiders, school- 
ing has helped tribal people to secure political and economic 
benefits. The education system there has provided a corps of 
highly trained tribal members in the professions and high- 
ranking administrative posts. 

Many tribal schools are plagued by high dropout rates. Chil- 
dren attend for the first three to four years of primary school 
and gain a smattering of knowledge, only to lapse into illiteracy 
later. Few who enter continue up to the tenth grade; of those 
who do, few manage to finish high school. Therefore, very few 
are eligible to attend institutions of higher education, where 
the high rate of attrition continues. 

Practices 

The influx of newcomers disinclined to follow tribal ways has 
had a massive impact on social relations and tribal belief sys- 
tems. In many communities, the immigrants have brought on 
nothing less than the total disintegration of the communities 
they entered. Even where outsiders are not residents in villages, 
traditional forms of social control and authority are less effec- 
tive because tribal people are patently dependent on politico- 
economic forces beyond their control. In general, traditional 
headmen no longer have official backing for their role in vil- 
lage affairs, although many continue to exercise considerable 
influence. Headmen can no longer control the allocation of 
land or decide who has the right to settle in the village, a loss of 
power that has had an insidious effect on village solidarity. 

Some headmen have taken to leasing village land to outsid- 
ers, thus enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of the 
tribes. Conflict over land rights has introduced a point of cleav- 
age into village social relations; increased factional conflict has 
seriously eroded the ability of tribes to ward off the intrusion of 
outsiders. In some villages, tribal schoolteachers have emerged 
as a new political force, a counterbalance to the traditional 
headman. Changes in landholding patterns have also altered 
the role of the joint family. More and more couples set up sepa- 
rate households as soon as they marry. Because land is no 
longer held and farmed in common and has grown more 
scarce, inheritance disputes have increased. 



209 



In d i a: A Co u ntry Stu dy 



Hunters and gatherers are particularly vulnerable to these 
far-reaching changes. The lack of strong authority figures in 
most hunting and gathering groups handicaps these tribes in 
organizing to negotiate with the government. In addition, 
these tribes are too small to have much political leverage. 
Forced settlement schemes also have had a deleterious impact 
on the tribes and their environment. Government-organized 
villages are typically larger than traditional hunting and gather- 
ing settlements. Forest reserves limit the amount of territory 
over which tribes can ran^e freelv. Larger villages and smaller 
territories have led, in some instances, to an increase in crime 
and violence. Traditionally, hunters and gatherers "settled" 
their disputes by arranging for the antagonists simply to avoid 
one another: new, more circumscribed villages preclude this 
arrangement. 

Tribal beliefs and rituals have altered in the face of increased 
contact with Hindus and missionaries of a variety of persua- 
sions (see Tribal Religions, ch. 3). Among groups in more 
intense contact with the Hindu majority, there have been vari- 
ous transformations. The Gonds, for example, traditionally 
worshiped clan gods through elaborate rites, with Pardhans 
organizing and performing the necessary rituals. The increas- 
ing impoverishment of large sections of the Gond tribe has 
made it difficult, if not impossible, to support the Pardhans as a 
class of ritual specialists. At the same time, many Gonds have 
concluded that the tribal gods were losing their power and effi- 
cacy. Gonds have tended to seek the assistance of other deities, 
and thus there has been widespread Hinduization of Gondi 
belief and practice. Some tribes have adopted the Hindu prac- 
tice of having costly elaborate weddings — a custom that con- 
tributes to indebtedness (as it has in many rural Indian 
families) and subjects them to the cash economy on the most 
deleterious of terms. Some families have adapted a traditional 
marriage pattern — that of capturing a bride — to modern con- 
ditions, using the custom to avoid the costly outlays associated 
with a formal wedding. 

Christian missionaries have been active among sundry tribes 
since the mid-nineteenth century. Conversion to Christianity 
offers a number of advantages, not the least of which is educa- 
tion. It was through the efforts of various Christian sects to 
translate the Bible into tribal languages that those tongues 
acquired a written script. Christian proselytizing has served to 
preserve tribal lore and language in written form at the same 



210 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

time that it has tended to change drastically the tribe's cultural 
heritage and belief systems. In some instances, the introduc- 
tion of Christianity has driven a wedge between converts and 
their fellow tribal members who continue to adhere to tradi- 
tional beliefs and practices (see Christianity, ch. 3). 

Descendants of Foreign Groups 

Jews and Parsis 

There are several groups descended from ancient settlers in 
India. These groups include the Jews, the first group of whom 
are said to have migrated from West Asia and to have settled in 
Cranganore (also the traditional first site where Muslims later 
arrived in India) on the Malabar Coast of Kerala in the first 
century A.D., a second group of Jews who fled the Arabian Pen- 
insula in the face of Muslim ascendancy in the seventh century, 
and the Parsis, who came to India in the eighth century A.D. to 
escape Muslim persecution in Persia (see Zoroastrianism; Juda- 
ism, ch. 3). 

Portuguese 

The European powers left a small ethnic imprint on India. 
The Portuguese came first and left last, but at no time had they 
extensive dominions such as the Indian kingdoms and empires 
or the lands of the British in India. The Austrians, Danish, 
Dutch, and French had yet smaller territories for shorter peri- 
ods. By the time truly large numbers of Europeans came to 
spend their working lives in India as part of the British Raj, rac- 
ist prejudices that were largely absent in earlier centuries had 
developed in the Europeans. Improvements in transportation 
(the steamship and the Suez Canal) also had made travel 
swifter and safer so at least the more prosperous classes could 
return to Europe on leave to marry or choose brides coming 
on the so-called "fishing fleets" for tourism and husband-hunt- 
ing. 

There are around 730,000 Portuguese Indians, commonly 
known as Goans or Goanese, about half of whom live in the 
state of Goa and the others elsewhere in India. They are 
descended from Indians in the former Portuguese colony who 
assimilated to Portuguese culture and in many cases are the 
descendants of Indo-Portuguese marriages, which the Portu- 
guese civil and religious authorities encouraged. 



211 



India: A Country Study 
Anglo-Indians 

The largest group of European Indians, however, are descen- 
dants of British men, generally from the colonial service and 
the military, and lower-caste Hindu or Muslim women. From 
some time in the nineteenth century, both the British and the 
Indian societies rejected the offspring of these unions, and so 
the Anglo-Indians, as they became known, sought marriage 
partners among other Anglo-Indians. Over time this group 
developed a number of caste-like features and acquired a spe- 
cial occupational niche in the railroad, postal, and customs ser- 
vices. A number of factors fostered a strong sense of commu- 
nity among Anglo-Indians. The school system focused on 
English language and culture and was virtually segregated, as 
were Anglo-Indian social clubs; the group's adherence to Chris- 
tianity also set members apart from most other Indians; and 
distinctive manners, diet, dress, and speech contributed to 
their segregation. 

During the independence movement, many Anglo-Indians 
identified (or were assumed to identify) with British rule, and, 
therefore, incurred the distrust and hostility of Indian nation- 
alists. Their position at independence was difficult. They felt a 
loyalty to a British "home" that most had never seen and where 
they would gain little social acceptance. They felt insecure in 
an India that put a premium on participation in the indepen- 
dence movement as a prerequisite for important government 
positions. Some Anglo-Indians left the country in 1947, hoping 
to make a new life in Britain or elsewhere in the Common- 
wealth of Nations, such as Australia or Canada. Many of these 
people returned to India after unsuccessful attempts to find a 
place in "alien" societies. Most Anglo-Indians, however, opted 
to stay in India and made whatever adjustments they deemed 
necessary. 

Like the Parsis, the Anglo-Indians are essentially urban 
dwellers. Unlike the Parsis, relatively few have attained high lev- 
els of education, amassed great wealth, or achieved more than 
subordinate government positions. In the 1990s, Anglo-Indians 
remained scattered throughout the country in the larger cities 
and those smaller towns serving as railroad junctions and com- 
munications centers. 

Constitutional guarantees of the rights of communities and 
religious and linguistic minorities permit Anglo-Indians to 
maintain their own schools and to use English as the medium 
of instruction. In order to encourage the integration of the 



212 



A Bhil tribal woman at the 
Baneshwar Fair, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



community into the larger society, the government stipulates 
that a certain percentage of the student body come from other 
Indian communities. There is no evident official discrimina- 
tion against Anglo-Indians in terms of current government 
employment. A few have risen to high posts; some are high- 
ranking officers in the military, and a few are judges. In occu- 
pational terms, at least, the assimilation of Anglo-Indians into 
the mainstream of Indian life was well under way by the 1990s. 
Nevertheless, the group will probably remain socially distinct as 
long as its members marry only other Anglo-Indians and its 
European descent continues to be noted. 

Africans 

Still another foreign-origin group, usually known collectively 
as Siddhis, are the descendants of Africans brought to India as 
slaves. Although most African-origin Indians are descendants 
of the large influx of slaves brought to western India in the sev- 
enteenth century, the first Africans reportedly arrived on the 
Konkani Coast in the first century A.D. as a result of the Arab 
slave trade, and there was an important African presence, 
including several short-term rulers, in Bengal in the fifteenth 
century. Siddhis (the name means lord or prince in African 
usage) sometimes rose to prominent — even ruling — govern- 



213 



India: A County Study 



mental and military positions during the Mughal and British 
periods. 

Most modern-day Siddhis are Muslims and are engaged in 
agricultural pursuits. Thev are found in Gujarat. Daman and 
Diu. Maharashtra. Karnataka.. Andhra Pradesh, and other 
states and union territories, where thev are designated as 
Scheduled Tribe members. 

Regionalism 

The formation of states along linguistic and ethnic lines has 
occurred in India in numerous instances since independence 
in 1947 i^see Linguistic States, this ch.). There have been 
demands, however, to form units within states based not only 
along linguistic, ethnic, and religious lines but also, in some 
cases, on a feeling of die distinctness of a geographical region 
and its culture and economic interests. The most volatile move- 
ments are those ongoing in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab 
see Political Issues, ch. 8: Insurgent Movements and External 
Subversion, ch. 9). How the central government responds to 
these demands will be an area of scrutiny through the late 
1990s and beyond. It is believed bv some officials that conced- 
ing regional autonomy is less arduous and takes less time and 
fewer resources than does meeting agitation, violence., and 
demands for concessions. 

Telangana Movement 

An earlv manifestation of regionalism was the Telangana 
movement in what became the state of Andhra Pradesh. The 
princely ruler of Hvderabad. the nizam. had attempted unsuc- 
cessfullv to maintain Hvderabad as an independent state sepa- 
rate from India in 1947. His efforts were simultaneous with the 
largest agrarian armed rebellion in modern Indian historv. 
Starting in July 1946, communist-led guerrilla squads began 
overthrowing local feudal village resumes and organizing land 
reform in Telugu-speaking areas of Hvderabad, collectively 
known as Telangana (an ancient name for the region dating 
from the Yijavanagar period). In time, about 3.000 villages and 
some 41.000 square kilometers of territory were involved in the 
revolt. Faced with the refusal of the nizam of Hvderabad to 
accede his territory to India and the violence of the commu- 
nist-led rebellion, the central government sent in the armv in 
September 194S. Bv November 1949. Hvderabad had been 



214 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

forced to accede to the Indian union, and, by October 1951, 
the violent phase of the Telangana movement had been sup- 
pressed. The effect of the 1946-51 rebellion and communist 
electoral victories in 1952 had led to the destruction of Hydera- 
bad and set the scene for the establishment of a new state along 
linguistic lines. In 1953, based on the recommendation of the 
States Reorganisation Commission, Telugu-speaking areas were 
separated from the former Madras States to form Andhra, 
India's first state established along linguistic lines. The commis- 
sion also contemplated establishing Telangana as a separate 
state, but instead Telangana was merged with Andhra to form 
the new state of Andhra Pradesh in 1956. 

The concerns about Telangana were manifold. The region 
had a less developed economy than Andhra, but a larger reve- 
nue base (mostly because it taxed rather than prohibited alco- 
holic beverages), which Telanganas feared might be diverted 
for use in Andhra. They also feared that planned dam projects 
on the Krishna and Godavari rivers would not benefit Telan- 
gana proportionately even though Telanganas controlled the 
headwaters of the rivers. Telanganas feared too that the people 
of Andhra would have the advantage in jobs, particularly in 
government and education. 

The central government decided to ignore the recommen- 
dation to establish a separate Telangana state and, instead, 
merged the two regions into a unified Andhra Pradesh. How- 
ever, a "gentlemen's agreement" provided reassurances to the 
Telangana people. For at least five years, revenue was to be 
spent in the regions proportionately to the amount they con- 
tributed. Education institutions in Telangana were to be 
expanded and reserved for local students. Recruitment to the 
civil service and other areas of government employment such 
as education and medicine was to be proportional. The use of 
Urdu was to continue in the administration and the judiciary 
for five years. The state cabinet was to have proportional mem- 
bership from both regions and a deputy chief minister from 
Telangana if the chief minister was from Andhra and vice versa. 
Finally, the Regional Council for Telangana was to be responsi- 
ble for economic development, and its members were to be 
elected by the members of the state legislative assembly from 
the region. 

In the following years, however, the Telangana people had a 
number of complaints about how the agreements and guaran- 
tees were implemented. The deputy chief minister position was 



215 



India: A Country Study 

never filled. Education institutions in the region were greatly 
expanded, but Telanganas felt that their enrollment was not 
proportionate to their numbers. The selection of the city of 
Hyderabad as the state capital led to massive migration of peo- 
ple from Andhra into Telangana. Telanganas felt discriminated 
against in education employment but were told by the state 
government that most non-Telanganas had been hired on the 
grounds that qualified local people were unavailable. In addi- 
tion, the unification of pay scales between the two regions 
appeared to disadvantage Telangana civil servants. In the atmo- 
sphere of discontent, professional associations that earlier had 
amalgamated broke apart by region. 

Discontent with the 1956 gentlemen's agreement intensified 
in January 1969 when the guarantees that had been agreed on 
were supposed to lapse. Student agitation for the continuation 
of the agreement began at Osmania University in Hyderabad 
and spread to other parts of the region. Government employ- 
ees and opposition members of the state legislative assembly 
swiftly threatened "direct action" in support of the students. 
The Congress-controlled state and central governments 
offered assurances that non-Telangana civil servants in the 
region would be replaced by Mulkis, disadvantaged local peo- 
ple, and that revenue surpluses from Telangana would be 
returned to the region. The protestors, however, were dissatis- 
fied, and severe violence, including mob attacks on railroads, 
road transport, and government facilities, spread over the 
region. In addition, seventy-nine police firings resulted in 
twenty-three deaths according to official figures, the education 
system was shut down, and examinations were cancelled. Calls 
for a separate Telangana state came in the midst of counter vio- 
lence in Andhra areas bordering Telangana. In the meantime, 
the Andhra Pradesh High Court decreed that a central govern- 
ment law mandating replacement of non-Telangana govern- 
ment employees with Mulkis was beyond Parliament's 
constitutional powers. 

Although the Congress faced dissension within its ranks, its 
leadership stood against additional linguistic states, which were 
regarded as "antinational." As a result, defectors from the Con- 
gress, led by M. Chenna Reddy, founded the Telangana Peo- 
ple's Association (Telangana Praja Samithi). Despite electoral 
successes, however, some of the new party leaders gave up their 
agitation in September 1971 and, much to the disgust of many 



216 



A Kuruvikkaran tribal forest 
dweller south of Madras, 
Tamil Nadu 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



separatists, rejoined the safer political haven of the Congress 
ranks. 

In 1972 the Supreme Court reversed the Andhra Pradesh 
High Court's ruling that the Mulki rules were unconstitutional. 
This decision triggered agitation in the Andhra region that 
produced six months of violence. 

Throughout the 1970s, Andhra Pradesh settled into a pat- 
tern of continuous domination by Congress (R) and later Con- 
gress (I), with much instability and dissidence within the state 
party and constant interference from Indira Gandhi and the 
national party. Chenna Reddy, the erstwhile opposition leader, 
was for a time the Congress (I) state chief minister. Congress 
domination was only ended by the founding of the Telugu 
National Party by N.T. Rama Rao in 1982 and its overwhelming 
victory in the state elections in 1983. 

Polls taken after the end of the Telangana movement 
showed a certain lack of enthusiasm for it, and for the idea of a 
separate state. Although urban groups (students and civil ser- 
vants) had been most active in the movement, its support was 
stronger in rural areas. Its supporters were mixed: low and mid- 
dle castes, the young and the not so young, women, illiterates 
and the poorly educated, and rural gentry. Speakers of several 
other languages than Telugu were heavily involved. The move- 
ment had no element of religious communalism, but some 



217 



India: A Country Study 

observers thought Muslims were particularly involved in the 
movement. Other researchers found the Muslims were unen- 
thusiastic about the movement and noted a feeling that migra- 
tion from Andhra to Telangana was creating opportunities that 
were helping non-Telanganas. On the other hand, of the two 
locally prominent Muslim political groups, only one supported 
a separate state; the other opposed the idea while demanding 
full implementation of the regional safeguards. Although Urdu 
speakers were appealed to in the agitation (e.g., speeches were 
given in Urdu as well as Telugu), in the aftermath Urdu disap- 
peared from the schools and the administration. 

The Telangana movement grew out of a sense of regional 
identity as such, rather than out of a sense of ethnic identity, 
language, religion, or caste. The movement demanded redress 
for economic grievances, the writing of a separate history, and 
establishment of a sense of cultural distinctness. The emotions 
and forces generated by the movement were not strong 
enough, however, for a continuing drive for a separate state. In 
the late 1980s and early 1990s, the People's War Group, an ele- 
ment of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), 
renewed violence in Andhra Pradesh but was dealt with by state 
police forces. The Telangana movement was never directed 
against the territorial integrity of India, unlike the insurrec- 
tions in Jammu and Kashmir and some of the unrest in north- 
eastern India. 

Jharkhand Movement 

The word Jharkhand, meaning "forest region," applies to a 
forested mountainous plateau region in eastern India, south of 
the Indo-Gangetic Plain and west of the Ganga's delta in Bang- 
ladesh. The term dates at least to the sixteenth century. In the 
more extensive claims of the movement, Jharkhand comprises 
seven districts in Bihar, three in West Bengal, four in Orissa, 
and two in Madhya Pradesh. Ninety percent of the Scheduled 
Tribes in Jharkhand live in the Bihar districts. The tribal peo- 
ples, who are from two groups, the Chotanagpurs and the San- 
tals, have been the main agitators for the movement. 

Jharkhand is mountainous and heavily forested and, there- 
fore, easy to defend. As a result, it was traditionally autonomous 
from the central government until the seventeenth century 
when its riches attracted the Mughal rulers. Mughal adminis- 
tration eventually led to more outside interference and a 



218 



A Kuruvikkaran tribal girl with 
a chipmunk on her shoulder, 
Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 




change from the traditional collective system of land owner- 
ship to one of private landholders. 

These trends intensified under British colonial rule, leading 
to more land being transferred to the local tribes' creditors and 
the development of a system of "bonded labor," which meant 
permanent and often hereditary debt slavery to one employer. 
Unable to make effective use of the British court system, tribal 
peoples resorted to rebellion starting in the late eighteenth 
century. In response, the British government passed a number 
of laws in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to restrict 
alienation of tribal lands and to protect the interests of tribal 
cultivators. 

The advent of Christian missions in the region in 1845 led to 
major cultural changes, which were later to be important in the 
Jharkhand movement. A significant proportion of the tribes 
converted to Christianity, and schools were founded for both 
sexes, including higher institutions to train tribal people as 
teachers. 

Jharkhand's mineral wealth also has been a problem for the 
tribes. The region is India's primary source of coal and iron. 
Bauxite, copper, limestone, asbestos, and graphite also are 
found there. Coal mining began in 1856, and the Tata Iron and 
Steel Factory was established injamshedpur in 1907. 



219 



India: A Country Study 



The modern Jharkhand movement dates to the earlv part of 
the twentieth century: activity was initially anions: Christian 

J 7 / / o 

tribal students but later also among non-Christians and even 
some nontribals. Rivalries developed among the various Protes- 
tant churches and with the Roman Catholic Church, but most 
of the groups coalesced in the electoral arena and achieved 
some successes on the local level in the 1930s. The movement 
at this period was directed more at Indian dikus (outsiders) 
than at the British. Jharkhand spokesmen made representa- 
tions to British constitutional commissions requesting a sepa- 
rate state and redress of Grievances, but without much success. 

Independence in 1947 brought emphasis on planned indus- 
trialization centering; on heaw industries, including a large 
expansion of mining. A measure of the economic importance 
of the Jharkhand mines is that the region produces more than 
73 percent of the revenue of Bihar, a large state. The socialist 
pattern of development pursued bv the central government led 
to forced sales of tribal lands to the government, with the usual 
problem of perceived inadequate compensation. On the other 
hand, government authorities felt that because the soils of the 
region are poor, industrialization was particularly necessary for 
the local people, not just for the national good. However, 
industrial development brought about further influx of outsid- 
ers, and local people considered that they were not being hired 
in sufficient numbers. The nationalization of the mines in 1971 
allegedly was followed bv the firing of almost 50.000 miners 
from Jharkhand and their replacement bv outsiders. 

Land was also acquired bv the government for building 
dams and their reservoirs. However, some observers thought 
that very little of the electricity and water produced by the 
dams was going to the region. In addition, government forestry 
favored the replacement of species of trees that had multiple 
uses to the forest dwellers with others useful onlv for commer- 
cial sales. Traditional shifting cultivation and forest grazing 
were restricted, and the local people felt that the prices paid by 
the government for forest products they gathered for sale were 
too low. In the decades since independence, these problems 
have persisted and intensified. 

On the political front, in 1949 the Jharkhand Party, under 
the leadership of Jaipal Singh, swept the tribal districts in the 
first general elections. When the States Reorganisation Com- 
mission was formed, a memorandum was submitted to it asking 
for an extensive region to be established as Jharkhand, which 



220 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 



would have exceeded West Bengal in area and Orissa in popu- 
lation. The commission rejected the idea of a Jharkhand state, 
however, on the grounds that it lacked a common language. In 
the 1950s, the Jharkhand Party continued as the largest opposi- 
tion party in the Bihar legislative assembly, but it gradually 
declined in strength. The worst blow came in 1963 when Jaipal 
Singh merged the party into the Congress without consulting 
the membership. In the wake of this move, several splinter 
Jharkhand parties were formed, with varying degrees of elec- 
toral success. These parties were largely divided along tribal 
lines, which the movement previously had not seen. 

There also has been dissention between Christian and non- 
Christian tribal people because of differences in level of educa- 
tion and economic development. Non-Christian tribals formed 
separate organizations to promote their interests in the 1940s 
and again in the 1960s. In 1968 a parliamentary study team vis- 
ited Ranchi investigating the removal of groups from the offi- 
cial list of Scheduled Tribes (thereby depriving these groups of 
various compensatory privileges). Mass meetings were held 
and petitions submitted to the study team maintaining that 
Christians had ceased to be tribals by conversion from tribal 
religions, and that they benefitted unfairly both from mission 
schooling and from government protection as members of 
Scheduled Tribes. In the following years, there were accusa- 
tions that the missionaries were foreign outside agitators, 

In August 1995, the state government of Bihar established 
the 180-member Provisional Jharkhand Area Autonomous 
Council. The council has 162 elected members (two each from 
eighty-one assembly constituencies in the Jharkhand area) and 
eighteen appointed members. 

Uttarakhand 

The term Uttarakhand, meaning "northern tract" or "higher 
tract," refers to the Himalayan districts of Uttar Pradesh, 
between the state of Himachal Pradesh to the west and Nepal 
to the east. It contains the eight districts of the Kumaon and 
Garhwal divisions. The main local languages are Kumaoni, 
Garhwali, and Pahari ("mountain"), a language of the Indo- 
Aryan family. The language of the elite, business, and adminis- 
tration is Hindi. 

The Uttarakhand movement is motivated by regional factors 
along with economic factors stemming from its particular geog- 
raphy. There is no protest against the dominance of Hindi in 



221 



India: A Country Study 



education and administration in the state. As regards religion, 
the population of the hills is almost entirely Hindu, like the 
large majority of Uttar Pradesh. The influx of outsiders has not 
become an issue; indeed, the problem has rather been the 
need for natives of the region to leave it. 

The residents of hill districts have felt themselves lost in the 
large state of Uttar Pradesh and their needs ignored by the pol- 
iticians more concerned with wider regional issues. There has 
been almost no development of industry or higher education, 
although the 1962 border war with China resulted in some 
infrastructure development, particularly roads, which also were 
extended to make the more remote pilgrimage sites more 
accessible. 

Men of the region are forced to leave their families in the 
hills and seek employment in the plains, where they mostly find 
menial positions as domestic servants, which they consider 
undignified and inappropriate to their caste. Students must 
also go to the plains for higher education. All find the heat of 
the lowlands very oppressive. 

The major potential in Uttarakhand for hydroelectric power 
from the Ganga and Yamuna rivers and for tourism has not 
been developed, locals feel. Springs, which are essential for 
drinking and irrigation water, have been allowed to dry up. 
The particular needs of hill agriculture have been ignored. 
The plains produce grain primarily, whereas fruit growing is 
more promising in the hills. On the other hand, adjacent 
Himachal Pradesh, which consists of Himalayan districts for- 
merly in Punjab or in associated princely states, became a state 
in 1948. Himachal Pradesh is geographically and culturally 
quite similar to Uttarakhand and has enjoyed satisfying 
progress in power generation, tourism, and cultivation. Some 
administrators observe that small states such as Himachal 
Pradesh can make more rapid progress just by virtue of being 
smaller, so that the problems are less overwhelming and local 
needs are not lost. 

The first demand for a separate Uttarakhand state was 
voiced by P.C. Joshi, a member of the Communist Party of 
India (CPI), in 1952. However, a movement did not develop in 
earnest until 1979 when the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Uttara- 
khand Revolutionary Front) was formed to fight for separa- 
tion. In 1991 the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly passed a 
resolution supporting the idea, but nothing came of it. In 1994 
student agitation against the state's implementation of the 



222 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 



Mandal Commission (see Glossary) report increasing the num- 
ber of reserved government positions and university places for 
lower caste people (the largest caste of Kumaon and Garhwal is 
the high-ranking Rajput Kshatriya group) expanded into a 
struggle for statehood. Violence spread on both sides, with 
attacks on police, police firing on demonstrators, and rapes of 
female Uttarakhand activists. In 1995 the agitation was 
renewed, mostly peacefully, under the leadership of the Uttara- 
khand Samyukta Sangharsh Samiti (Uttarakhand United Strug- 
gle Association), a coalition headed by the Uttarakhand Kranti 
Dal. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seeing the appeal of 
statehood to its high-caste constituencies, also supported the 
movement, but wanted to act on its own. To distinguish its 
activities, the BJP wanted the new state to be called Uttaran- 
chal, meaning "northern border or region," essentially a syn- 
onym for Uttarakhand. In 1995 various marches and 
demonstrations of the Uttarakhand movement were tense with 
the possibility of conflict not just with the authorities, but also 
between the two main political groups. Actual violence, how- 
ever, was rare. A march to New Delhi in support of statehood 
was being planned later in the year. An interesting develop- 
ment was that women were playing an active leadership role in 
the agitation. 

Gorkhaland 

The Gorkhaland movement grew from the demand of Nepa- 
lis living in Darjiling District of West Bengal for a separate state 
for themselves. The Gorkhaland National Liberation Front led 
the movement, which disrupted the district with massive vio- 
lence between 1986 and 1988. The issue was resolved, at least 
temporarily, in 1988 with the establishment of the Darjiling 
Gorkha Hill Council within West Bengal. 

Historically, Darjiling belonged to the kingdom of Sikkim, 
which had lost it several times since the eighteenth century. 
The ethnic identity "Gorkha" comes from the kingdom with 
that name that united Nepal in the late eighteenth century and 
was the focal point of Nepalese in the British army. 

Immigration from Nepal expanded with British rule in 
India, and some 34 percent of the population of Darjiling in 
1876 was of Gorkha (also seen as Gurkha) ethnicity. By the start 
of the twentieth century, Nepalese immigrants made a modest 
socioeconomic advance through government service, and a 
small anglicized elite developed among them. In 1917 the Hill- 



223 



India: A Country Study 

men's Association came into being and petitioned for the 
administrative separation of Darjiling in 1917 and again in 
1928 and 1942. In 1928 the Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League 
(All India Gorkha League) was formed. It gained additional 
support after World War II with the influx of ex-soldiers from 
the Gurkha regiments who had been exposed to nationalist 
movements in Southeast Asia during service there. 

During the 1940s, the CPI organized Gorkha tea workers. In 
presentations to the States Reorganisation Commission in 
1954, the CPI favored regional autonomy for Darjiling within 
West Bengal, with recognition of Nepali as a Scheduled Lan- 
guage. The All India Gorkha League preferred making the 
area a union territory under the national government (see 
Local Government, ch. 8). 

The state of West Bengal nominally has been supportive of 
the use of the Nepali language. The West Bengal Official Lan- 
guage Act of 1961 made Nepali the official language of the hill 
subdivisions of Darjiling, Kalimpong, and Kurseong, where 
Nepalese are a majority. The state legislative assembly passed a 
resolution in 1977 that led Parliament to amend the national 
constitution to include Nepali as a Scheduled Language. How- 
ever, the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front has accused 
the state government of failure to actually implement use of 
the language. 

The Gorkhaland movement distinguished Darjiling Gorkhas 
from nationals of Nepal legally resident in India, from Nepali- 
speaking Indian citizens from other parts of the country, and 
even from the majority in neighboring Sikkim, where Nepali is 
the official language. The movement was emphatic that it had 
no desire to separate from India, only from the state of West 
Bengal. Gorkhaland supporters therefore preferred to call the 
Gorkhas' language Gorkhali rather than Nepali, although they 
did not attempt to claim there is any linguistic difference from 
what other people call Nepali. The 1981 census of India, 
whether in deference to this sentiment or for some other rea- 
son, called the language Gorkhali /Nepali. However, when the 
Eighth Schedule of the constitution was amended in 1992 to 
make it a Scheduled Language, the term Nepali alone was used. 

In 1986 the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front, having 
failed to obtain a separate regional administrative identity from 
Parliament, again demanded a separate state of Gorkhaland. 
The party's leader, Subhash Ghising, headed a demonstration 
that turned violent and was severely repressed by the state gov- 



224 



Young Pathan Muslim woman 
in gold and pearl jewelry, 
Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



ernment. The disturbances almost totally shut down the dis- 
tricts' economic mainstays of tea, tourism, and timber. The Left 
Front government of West Bengal, which earlier had supported 
some form of autonomy, now opposed it as "antinational." The 
state government claimed that Darjiling was no worse off than 
the state in general and was richer than many districts. Ghising 
made lavish promises to his followers, including the recruit- 
ment of 40,000 Indian Gorkhas into the army and paying 
Rsl00,000 (for value of the rupee — see Glossary) for every 
Gorkha writer. After two years of fighting and the loss of at least 
200 lives, the government of West Bengal and the central gov- 
ernment finally agreed on an autonomous hill district. In July 
1988, the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front gave up the 
demand for a separate state, and in August the Darjiling 
Gorkha Hill Council came into being with Ghising as chair- 
man. The council had authority over economic development 
programs, education, and culture. 

However, difficulties soon arose over the panchayat (see Glos- 
sary) elections. Ghising wanted the hill council excluded from 
the national law on panchayat elections. Rajiv Gandhi's govern- 
ment was initially favorable to his request and introduced a 
constitutional amendment in 1989 to exclude the Darjiling 
Gorkha Hill Council, along with several other northeast hill 
states and regions (Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and the 



225 



India: A Country Study 

hill regions of Manipur), but it did not pass. However, in 1992 
Parliament passed the Seventy-third Amendment, which 
seemed to show a newly serious commitment to the idea of 
local self-government by panchayats. The amendment excluded 
all the hill areas just mentioned except Darjiling. Ghising 
insisted this omission was a machination of West Bengal and 
threatened to revive militant agitation for a Gorkhaland state. 
He also said the Gorkhaland National Liberation Front would 
boycott the village panchayat elections mandated by the amend- 
ment. A large portion of his party, however, refused to accept 
the boycott and split off under the leadership of Chiten Sherpa 
to form the All India Gorkha League, which won a sizable num- 
ber of panchayat seats. 

In 1995 it was unclear whether the region would remain con- 
tent with autonomy rather than statehood. In August 1995, 
Sherpa complained to the state government that Ghising's gov- 
ernment had misused hill council funds, and West Bengal chief 
minister Jyoti Basu promised to investigate. Both Gorkha par- 
ties showed willingness to use general shutdowns to forward 
their ends. The fact that so many people were willing to follow 
Sherpa instead of the hitherto unchallenged Ghising may indi- 
cate that they will be satisfied with regional autonomy. 

Ladakh 

The region of Ladakh is isolated in the Himalayas next to 
Tibet and differs radically from the rest of the state in that the 
majority of the population is culturally, ethnically, religiously, 
and linguistically close to Tibet. There also is a Muslim minor- 
ity. The region has no interest in the separatist and Islamicist 
sentiments of the Vale of Kashmir. 

Following several years of discontent and agitation about the 
position of Ladakh District in the state ofjammu and Kashmir, 
the central government passed the Ladakh Autonomous Hill 
Development Councils Act in May 1995. The 1995 act estab- 
lished councils for the Leh and Kargil subdistricts and allotted 
them powers for economic development, land use, and taxa- 
tion. Elections for the Leh council were held in August 1995. 
Congress (I) won all twenty-two elective seats unopposed; the 
governor ofjammu and Kashmir was authorized to appoint 
four members from among minorides and women. 

The Northeast 

Northeastern India is made up of the states of Assam, 



226 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, 
and Nagaland. Certain tensions exist between these states and 
a relatively distant central government and between the tribal 
peoples, who are natives of these states, and migrant peoples 
from other parts of India. These tensions have led the natives 
of these states to seek a greater participation in their own gov- 
ernance, control of their states' economies, and their role in 
society. Emerging from these desires for greater self-gover- 
nance are new regional political parties and continued insur- 
gent movements (see Political Parties, ch. 8; Insurgent 
Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). In addition to 
the more frequently analyzed regional movements in Jammu 
and Kashmir, Punjab, and states such as Assam and Nagaland 
in the northeast, there are other regional movements, such as 
those in the Tripura and Miso tribal areas. 

In May 1995, the state government of Tripura extended the 
area covered by the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District 
Council, a result of the tripartite accord among the central gov- 
ernment, the state government, and the Tripura National Vol- 
unteers movement concluded in 1988. In the elections in July 
1995, the Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India 
(Marxist), defeated the alliance of the Congress (I) and the 
local Tripura Tribal Youth Association (Tripura Upajati Juba 
Samiti), which had controlled the council since 1990. The new 
council proceeded to dissolve the more than 400 development 
committees at various levels under its jurisdiction for corrup- 
tion and inaction and promised to constitute new ones swiftly. 

In June 1995, the Assam government signed an agreement 
with two organizations of the Mising tribe, the Mising Autono- 
mous Demand Committee and the Mising Greater Council 
(Mising Bane Kebang), to set up an autonomous council for 
the Misings. The council will include villages with majority 
tribal populations in four districts of Assam, with a total popula- 
tion expected to be about 315,000. However, villages in so- 
called Reserve Forest Areas will be included only with the 
approval of the central minister of state with independent 
charge of environment and forests. This decision is a possible 
source of discontent because tribals frequently feel themselves 
hampered by restrictions on the use of forests by the govern- 
ment. However, in July 1995 the Mising Bane Kebang boy- 
cotted the swearing in of the interim council because it said the 
Mising Autonomous Demand Committee had kept it out of its 
formation. 



227 



India: A Country Study 



Outlook 

In the 1990s, the central government has seemed far more 
willing than previously to grant demands for regional political 
entities within states, acceding to more demands and doing so 
after less agitation. This change may be part of a wider willing- 
ness to decentralize manifested in the recent trend of serious 
support of panchayati raj, granting more taxing, legislative, and 
development powers to panchayats at various levels and holding 
long-delayed elections to them. The demands on money, time, 
and military and police personnel caused by the disturbances 
in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and the northeastern states, 
and other military actions, such as that in Sri Lanka, may have 
made the central authorities more reluctant to resist demands 
if resistance might require military suppression. This trend to 
concede substate entities presages a number of possible out- 
comes for the Indian polity. 

It should be noted that any of these regional changes, from 
the purely legal point of view, could be reversed by the central 
government on its own accord. Most constitutional amend- 
ments require only a two-thirds vote of Parliament. However, 
once in place, the various regional entities create a heavy self- 
interest among their office-holders and employees, in addition 
to those who feel served by their creation. An attempt to 
reverse the delegation of power could arouse agitations at least 
as intense as the original movements to force the issue. 

The traditional worry about further divisions of or within 
states was that they would be "antinational, " weakening 
national unity. Although the reorganization of states on linguis- 
tic lines was initiallv resisted as a challenge to national unity, 
once established, new states were not regarded as a threat, per- 
haps because they just had to be accepted as a fait accompli, 
and no attempt to reverse the organization of states on linguis- 
tic grounds has been suggested. This attitude prevails in spite 
of the secessionist sentiment that used to exist in Tamil Nadu 
and still does in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. Once the 
substate entities are operational, their continued existence may 
be regarded as similarly inevitable. However, as has been 
observed, the regionalist movements have mostly preached, 
with apparent sincerity, their attachment to the nation; their 
complaints have rather been with state apparatuses. Anyone 
concerned about the possibility of secession from India might 
consider that a process granting more regional government 
bodies might in fact strengthen national unity. The regional 



228 



Language, Ethnicity, and Regionalism 

governments within linguistic states could serve as additional 
centers of loyalty, benefits, and patronage in competition with 
the linguistic states, weakening a state's ability to attract an 
exclusive attachment and be seen as a candidate to be an inde- 
pendent national entity. 

Whereas regional sentiment is partly linguistic, promotion of 
the local languages may provide a counterweight to the ten- 
dencies of states to insist on the spread of the state language at 
the expense of all others, a spread which, to the extent that it 
succeeds, makes the state something more nearly approaching 
a nation-state. The substate regions have been granted finan- 
cial and other political powers, which, if they wish, they can use 
to encourage the formation or intensification of ethnic con- 
sciousness, as the states also can. But, since the regions are 
smaller bodies, they are less likely to contemplate indepen- 
dence or to concur with a move toward independence if the 
states should do so. 

Apart from the reduction of threats to national unity, the 
recognition of regionalism may have further political benefits. 
First is the reduction of the violence that ensues from regional 
movements and their repression. It is hoped that intermediate 
governments also will be able to reduce political violence by 
allowing the swifter expression and solution of the woes of dis- 
contented peoples. Such action cannot be guaranteed; it 
depends in part on which politicians get elected. Resolution of 
problems neglected by central and state authorities and that 
originally motivated the movements is also possible. Moreover, 
such resolution may result in greater participation in demo- 
cratic government by those voting or holding office in organi- 
zations closer to local concerns and groups than is the national 
Parliament or even the state legislatures. In this way, there is a 
continuation of the political mobilization started in the course 
of the movements. 

If substate regions proliferate, including regional entities 
within regional entities, the process will resemble traditional 
Indian polities with imperial powers, feudatory monarchies, 
subinfeudation within those, and real political power at the 
local level. Arguably, this situation would accommodate the 
true nature of the society better than the quite centralized sys- 
tem India has had since independence and provide scope for 
real democracy. 

* * * 



229 



India: A Country Study 



Michael Shapiro and Harold Schiffmann's Language and Soci- 
ety in South Asia is the best summation of research on the lan- 
guages of the region and their place in social life. Among 
somewhat older works, Language and Civilization Change in 
South Asia, edited by Clarence Maloney, remains useful, and in 
particular the introduction by the editor gives a good general 
overview. An excellent summary of the history and current 
state of research on the linguistics, sociolinguistics, and history 
of Indo-Aryan languages is found in Colin P. Masica's The Indo- 
Aryan Languages. 

Language statistics, as well as lists of languages, are found in 
the decennial Indian census. Useful statistics gathered on dif- 
ferent principles, counting communities (Scheduled Castes, 
Scheduled Tribes, and other categories) rather than individu- 
als, gathered by the Anthropological Survey of India are found 
in the volumes edited by Kumar Suresh Singh, in the series Peo- 
ple of India. Particularly useful on tribes are K.S. Singh's An 
Anthropological Atlas, which includes maps covering culture, lan- 
guage, physical anthropology, and other useful categories; his 
The Scheduled Tribes is a thorough encyclopedia of all the tribes. 

On the construction of linguistic and other identities, Paul 
R. Brass's Language, Religion and Politics in North India remains 
basic to an understanding of the subject. Themes in it are 
updated in his The Politics of India since Independence. 

All of Christoph von Ftirer-Haimendorf's works on India's 
tribal people are useful. His Tribal Populations and Cultures of the 
Indian Subcontinent provides a contemporary view of some of 
the country's larger tribes. Moonis Raza and Aijazuddin 
Ahmad's An Atlas of Tribal India is also useful. 

Bernard S. Cohn's India: The Social Anthropology of a Civiliza- 
tion and David G. Mandelbaum's two-volume Society in India 
remain essential background works. (For further information 
and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



230 



Chapter 5. Social Systems 



Wedding scene from a drawing, Madhubani, Bihar 



INDIA IS JUSTLY FAMOUS for its complex social systems. 
Indian society is multifaceted to an extent perhaps unknown in 
any other of the world's great civilizations. Virtually no general- 
ization made about Indian society is valid for all of the nation's 
multifarious groups. Comprehending the complexities of 
Indian social structure has challenged scholars and other 
observers over many decades. 

The ethnic and linguistic diversity of Indian civilization is 
more like the diversity of an area as variable as Europe than 
like that of any other single nation-state. Living within the 
embrace of the Indian nation are vast numbers of different 
regional, social, and economic groups, each with different cul- 
tural practices. Particularly noteworthy are differences between 
social structures in the north and the south, especially in the 
realm of kinship systems. Throughout the country, religious 
differences can be significant, especially between the Hindu 
majority and the large Muslim minority; and other Indian 
groups — Buddhists, Christians, Jains, Jews, Parsis, Sikhs, and 
practitioners of tribal religions — all pride themselves on being 
unlike members of other faiths. 

Access to wealth and power varies considerably, and vast dif- 
ferences in socioeconomic status are evident everywhere. The 
poor and the wealthy live side by side in urban and rural areas. 
It is common in city life to see a prosperous, well-fed man or 
woman chauffeured in a fine car pass gaunt street dwellers 
huddled beneath burlap shelters along the roadway. In many 
villages, solid cement houses of landowners rise not far from 
the flimsy thatched shacks of landless laborers. Even when not 
so obvious, distinctions of class are found in almost every settle- 
ment in India. 

Urban-rural differences can be immense. Nearly 74 percent 
of India's population dwells in villages, with agriculture provid- 
ing support for most of these rural residents. In villages, mud- 
plastered walls ornamented with traditional designs, dusty 
lanes, herds of grazing cattle, and the songs of birds at sunset 
provide typical settings for the social lives of most Indians. In 
India's great cities, however, millions of people live amidst 
cacophony — roaring vehicles, surging crowds, jammed apart- 
ment buildings, busy commercial establishments, loudspeakers 



233 



India: A Country Study 

blaring movie tunes — while breathing the poisons of industrial 
and automotive pollution. 

Gender distinctions are pronounced. The behavior 
expected of men and women can be quite different, especially 
in villages, but also in urban centers. Prescribed ideal gender 
roles help shape the actions of both sexes as they move 
between family and the world outside the home. 

Crosscutting and pervading all of these differences of 
region, language, wealth, status, religion, urbanity, and gender 
is the special feature of Indian society that has received most 
attention from observers: caste. The people of India belong to 
thousands of castes and castelike groups — hierarchically 
ordered, named groups into which members are born. Caste 
members are expected to marry within the group and follow 
caste rules pertaining to diet, avoidance of ritual pollution, and 
many other aspects of life. 

Given the vast diversity of Indian society, any observation 
must be tempered with the understanding that it cannot apply 
to all Indians. Still, certain themes or underlying principles of 
life are widely accepted in India. 

Themes in Indian Society 
Hierarchy 

India is a hierarchical society. Within Indian culture, 
whether in the north or the south, Hindu or Muslim, urban or 
village, virtually all things, people, and groups of people are 
ranked according to various essential qualities. If one is 
attuned to the theme of hierarchy in India, one can discern it 
everywhere. Although India is a political democracy, in daily 
life there is little advocacy of or adherence to notions of equal- 
ity. 

Castes and castelike groups — those quintessential groups 
with which almost all Indians are associated — are ranked. 
Within most villages or towns, everyone knows the relative 
rankings of each locally represented caste, and people's behav- 
ior toward one another is constantly shaped by this knowledge. 
Between the extremes of the very high and very low castes, 
however, there is sometimes disagreement on the exact relative 
ranking of castes clustered in the middle. 

Castes are primarily associated with Hinduism but also exist 
among other Indian religious groups. Muslims sometimes 
expressly deny that they have castes — they state that all Muslims 



234 



Social Systems 



are brothers under God — but observation of Muslim life in var- 
ious parts of India r eveals the existence of castelike groups and 
clear concern with social hierarchy. Among Indian Christians, 
too, differences in caste are acknowledged and maintained. 

Throughout India, individuals are also ranked according to 
their wealth and power. For example, there are "big men" (bare 
admi, in Hindi) and "little men" (chhote admi) everywhere. "Big 
men" sit confidently on chairs, while "little men" come before 
them to make requests, either standing or crouching down on 
their haunches, certainly not presuming to sit beside a man of 
high status as an equal. Even men of nearly equal status who 
might share a string cot to sit on take their places carefully — 
the higher-ranking man at the head of the cot, the lower-rank- 
ing man at the foot. 

Within families and kinship groupings, there are many dis- 
tinctions of hierarchy. Men outrank women of the same or sim- 
ilar age, and senior relatives outrank junior relatives. Several 
other kinship relations involve formal respect. For example, in 
northern India, a daughter-in-law of a household shows defer- 
ence to a daughter of a household. Even among young siblings 
in a household, there is constant acknowledgment of age dif- 
ferences: younger siblings never address an older sibling by 
name, but rather by respectful terms for elder brother or elder 
sister. However, an older sibling may address the younger by 
name (see Linguistic Relations, ch. 4). 

Even in a business or academic setting, where colleagues 
may not openly espouse traditional observance of caste or class 
ranking behavior, they may set up Active kinship relations, 
addressing one another by kinship terms reflecting family or 
village-style hierarchy. For example, a younger colleague might 
respectfully address an older colleague as chachaji (respected 
father's younger brother), gracefully acknowledging the supe- 
rior position of the older colleague. 

Purity and Pollution 

Many status differences in Indian society are expressed in 
terms of ritual purity and pollution. Notions of purity and pol- 
lution are extremely complex and vary greatly among different 
castes, religious groups, and regions. However, broadly speak- 
ing, high status is associated with purity and low status with pol- 
lution. Some kinds of purity are inherent, or inborn; for 
example, gold is purer than copper by its very nature, and, sim- 
ilarly, a member of a high-ranking Brahman (see Glossary), or 



235 



India: A Country Study 



priestly caste is born with more inherent puritv than a member 
of a low-ranking- Sweeper (Mehtar. in Hindi * caste. Unless the 
Brahman defiles himself in some extraordinary way through- 
out his life he will always be purer than a Sweeper. Other kinds 
of puritv are more transitory — a Brahman who has just taken a 
bath is more ritually pure than a Brahman who has not bathed 
for a dav. This situation could easily reverse itself temporarily, 
depending: on bath schedules, participation in polluting activi- 
ties, or contact with temporarily polluting; substances. 

Puritv is associated with ritual cleanliness — daily bathing in 
flowing water, dressing in properly laundered clothes of 
approved materials, eating onlv the foods appropriate for one's 
caste, refraining from physical contact with people of lower 
rank, and avoiding; involvement with rituallv impure sub- 
stances. The latter include body wastes and excretions, most 
especially those of another adult person. Contact with the 
products of death or violence are typically polluting and threat- 
ening to ritual puritv 

During: her menstrual period, a woman is considered pol- 
luted and refrains from cooking, worshiping, or touching any- 
one older than an infant. In much of the south, a woman 
spends this time sitting outside." resting in an isolated room or 
shed. During her period, a Muslim woman does not touch the 
Quran. At the end of the period, purity is restored with a com- 
plete bath. Pollution also attaches to birth, both for the mother 
and the infant's close kin. and to death, for close relatives of 
the deceased <see The Ceremonies of Hinduism: Islam, ch. 3). 

Members of the highest priestly castes, the Brahmans. are 
srenerallv vegetarians i although some Bengali and Maharash- 
trian Brahmans eat fish I and avoid eating meat, the product of 
violence and death. High-ranking Warrior castes (fohatriyas), 
however, typically consume nonvegetarian diets, considered 
appropriate for their traditions of valor and physical strength. 

A Brahman born of proper Brahman parents retains his 
inherent puritv if he bathes and dresses himself properly, 
adheres to a vegetarian diet, eats meals prepared onlv by per- 
sons of appropriate rank, and keeps his person awav from the 
bodih" exuviae of others (except for necessary contact with the 
secretions of family infants and small children). 

If a Brahman happens to come into bodily contact with a 
polluting substance, he can remove this pollution bv bathing 
and changing his clothing. However, if he were to eat meat or 
commit other transgressions of the rigid dietary codes of his 



Social Systems 



particular caste, he would be considered more deeply polluted 
and would have to undergo various purifying rites and payment 
of fines imposed by his caste council in order to restore his 
inherent purity. 

In sharp contrast to the purity of a Brahman, a Sweeper born 
of Sweeper parents is considered to be born inherently pol- 
luted. The touch of his body is polluting to those higher on the 
caste hierarchy than he, and they will shrink from his touch, 
whether or not he has bathed recently Sweepers are associated 
with the traditional occupation of cleaning human feces from 
latrines and sweeping public lanes of all kinds of dirt. Tradi- 
tionally, Sweepers remove these polluting materials in baskets 
carried atop the head and dumped out in a garbage pile at the 
edge of the village or neighborhood. The involvement of 
Sweepers with such filth accords with their low-status position 
at the bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy, even as their ser- 
vices allow high-status people, such as Brahmans, to maintain 
their ritual purity. 

Members of the Leatherworker (Chamar) caste are ascribed 
a very low status consonant with their association with the caste 
occupation of skinning dead animals and tanning the leather. 
Butchers (Khatiks, in Hindi), who kill and cut up the bodies of 
animals, also rank low on the caste hierarchy because of their 
association with violence and death. 

However, castes associated with ruling and warfare — and the 
killing and deaths of human beings — are typically accorded 
high rank on the caste hierarchy. In these instances, political 
power and wealth outrank association with violence as the key 
determinant of caste rank. 

Maintenance of purity is associated with the intake of food 
and drink, not only in terms of the nature of the food itself, but 
also in terms of who has prepared it or touched it. This require- 
ment is especially true for Hindus, but other religious groups 
hold to these principles to varying degrees. Generally, a person 
risks pollution — and lowering his own status — if he accepts bev- 
erages or cooked foods from the hands of people of lower caste 
status than his own. His status will remain intact if he accepts 
food or beverages from people of higher caste rank. Usually, 
for an observant Hindu of any but the very lowest castes to 
accept cooked food from a Muslim or Christian is regarded as 
highly polluting. 

In a clear example of pollution associated with dining, a 
Brahman who consumed a drink of water and a meal of wheat 



237 



India: A Country Study 



bread with boiled vegetables from the hands of a Sweeper 
would immediately become polluted and could expect social 
rejection by his caste fellows. From that moment, fellow Brah- 
mans following traditional pollution rules would refuse food 
touched by him and would abstain from the usual social inter- 
action with him. He would not be welcome inside Brahman 
homes — most especially in the ritually pure kitchens — nor 
would he or his close relatives be considered eligible marriage 
partners for other Brahmans. 

Generally, the acceptance of water and ordinary foods 
cooked in water from members of lower-ranking castes incurs 
the greatest pollution. In North India, such foods are known as 
kaccha khana, as contrasted with fine foods cooked in butter or 
oils, which are known as pakka khana. Fine foods can be 
accepted from members of a few castes slightly lower than one's 
own. Local hierarchies differ on the specific details of these 
rules. 

Completely raw foods, such as uncooked grains, fresh 
unpeeled bananas, mangoes, and uncooked vegetables can be 
accepted by anyone from anyone else, regardless of relative sta- 
tus. Toasted or parched foods, such as roasted peanuts, can also 
be accepted from anyone without ritual or social repercussions. 
(Thus, a Brahman may accept gifts of grain from lower-caste 
patrons for eventual preparation by members of his own caste, 
or he may purchase and consume roasted peanuts or tanger- 
ines from street vendors of unknown caste without worry.) 

Water served from an earthen pot may be accepted only 
from the hands of someone of higher or equal caste ranking, 
but water served from a brass pot may be accepted even from 
someone slightly lower on the caste scale. Exceptions to this 
rule are members of the Waterbearer (Bhoi, in Hindi) caste, 
who are employed to carry water from wells to the homes of 
the prosperous and from whose hands members of all castes 
may drink water without becoming polluted, even though 
Waterbearers are not ranked high on the caste scale. 

These and a great many other traditional rules pertaining to 
purity and pollution constantly impinge upon interaction 
between people of different castes and ranks in India. 
Although to the non-Indian these rules may seem irrational 
and bizarre, to most of the people of India they are a ubiqui- 
tous and accepted part of life. Thinking about and following 
purity and pollution rules make it necessary for people to be 
constantly aware of differences in status. With every drink of 



238 



Woman operating a hand pump 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobs on 



water, with every meal, and with every contact with another 
person, people must ratify the social hierarchy of which they 
are a part and within which their every act is carried out. The 
fact that expressions of social status are intricately bound up 
with events that happen to everyone every day — eating, drink- 
ing, bathing, touching, talking — and that transgressions of 
these rules, whether deliberate or accidental, are seen as hav- 
ing immediately polluting effects on the person of the trans- 
gressor, means that every ordinary act of human life serves as a 
constant reminder of the importance of hierarchy in Indian 
society. 

There are many Indians, particularly among the educated 
urban elite, who do not follow traditional purity and pollution 
practices. Dining in each others' homes and in restaurants is 
common among well-educated people of diverse backgrounds, 
particularly when they belong to the same economic class. For 
these people, guarding the family's earthen water pot from 
inadvertent touch by a low-ranking servant is not the concern it 
is for a more traditional villager. However, even among those 
people whose words and actions denigrate traditional purity 
rules, there is often a reluctance to completely abolish con- 
sciousness of purity and pollution from their thinking. It is 
surely rare for a Sweeper, however well-educated, to invite a 



239 



India: A Country Study 

Brahman to dinner in his home and have his invitation unself- 
consciously accepted. It is less rare, however, for educated 
urban colleagues of vastly different caste and religious heritage 
to enjoy a cup of tea together. Some high-caste liberals pride 
themselves on being free of "casteism" and seek to accept food 
from the hands of very low-caste people, or even deliberately 
set out to marry someone from a significantly lower caste or a 
different religion. Thus, even as they deny it, these progressives 
affirm the continuing significance of traditional rules of purity, 
pollution, and hierarchy in Indian society. 

Social Interdependence 

One of the great themes pervading Indian life is social inter- 
dependence. People are born into groups — families, clans, sub- 
castes, castes, and religious communities — and live with a 
constant sense of being part of and inseparable from these 
groups. A corollary is the notion that everything a person does 
properly involves interaction with other people. A person's 
greatest dread, perhaps, is the possibility of being left alone, 
without social support, to face the necessary challenges of life. 
This sense of interdependence is extended into the theological 
realm: the very shape of a person's life is seen as being greatly 
influenced by divine beings with whom an ongoing relation- 
ship must be maintained. 

Social interaction is regarded as being of the highest prior- 
ity, and social bonds are expected to be long lasting. Even eco- 
nomic activities that might in Western culture involve 
impersonal interactions are in India deeply imbedded in a 
social nexus. All social interaction involves constant attention 
to hierarchy, respect, honor, the feelings of others, rights and 
obligations, hospitality, and gifts of food, clothing, and other 
desirable items. Finely tuned rules of etiquette help facilitate 
each individual's many social relationships. - 

Western visitors to India are sometimes startled to find that 
important government and business officials have left their 
posts — often for many days at a time — -to attend a cousin's wed- 
ding or participate in religious activities in a distant part of the 
country. "He is out of station and will be back in a week or two," 
the absent official's officemates blandly explain to the frus- 
trated visitor. What is going on is not laziness or hedonistic rec- 
reation, but is the official's proper recognition of his need to 
continually maintain his social ties with relatives, caste fellows, 
other associates, and God. Without being enmeshed in such 



240 



Social Systems 



ties throughout life, a person cannot hope to maintain long- 
term efficacy in either economic or social endeavors. Social 
bonds with relatives must be reinforced at family events or at 
rites crucial to the religious community. If this is not done, peo- 
ple who could offer vital support in many phases of life would 
be alienated. 

In every activity, there is an assumption that social ties can 
help a person and that their absence can bring failure. Seldom 
do people carry out even the simplest task on their own. From 
birth onward, a child learns that his "fate" has been "written" by 
divine forces and that his life will be shaped by a plan decided 
by more powerful beings. When a small child eats, his mother 
puts the mouthfuls of food into his mouth with her own hand. 
When a boy climbs a tree to pluck mangoes, another stands 
below with a basket to receive them. When a girl fetches water 
from the well in pots on her head, someone at her home helps 
her unload the pots. When a farmer stacks sheaves of grain 
onto his bullock cart, he stands atop the cart, catching the 
sheaves tossed up to him by his son. 

A student applying to a college hopes that he has an influen- 
tial relative or family friend who can put in a good word for 
him with the director of admissions. At the age of marriage, a 
young person expects that parents will take care of finding the 
appropriate bride or groom and arranging all the formalities. 
At the birth of a child, the new mother is assured that the 
child's kin will help her attend to the infant's needs. A business- 
man seeking to arrange a contract relies not only on his own 
abilities but also on the assistance of well-connected friends 
and relatives to help finalize the deal. And finally, when facing 
death, a person is confident that offspring and other relatives 
will carry out the appropriate funeral rites, including a com- 
memorative feast when, through gifts of clothing and food, 
continuing social ties are reaffirmed by all in attendance. 

Family and Kinship 
Family Ideals 

In India, people learn the essential themes of cultural life 
within the bosom of a family. In most of the country, the basic 
units of society are the patrilineal family unit and wider kinship 
groupings. The most widely desired residential unit is the joint 
family, ideally consisting of three or four patrilineally related 
generations, all living under one roof, working, eating, wor- 



241 



Ind i a : A Co u n try St u dy 



shiping, and cooperating together in mutually beneficial social 
and economic activities. Patrilineal joint families include men 
related through the male line, along with their wives and chil- 
dren. Most voung women expect to live with their husband's 
relatives after marriage, but they retain important bonds with 
their natal families. 

Despite the continuous and growing impact of urbanization, 
secularization, and Westernization, the traditional joint house- 
hold, both in ideal and in practice, remains the primarv social 
force in the lives of most Indians. Loyalty to family is a deeply 
held ideal for almost evervone. 

Large families tend to be flexible and w T ell-suited to modern 
Indian life, especiallv for the 67 percent of Indians who are 
farmers or agricultural workers or w T ork in related activities (see 
Size and Composition of the Workforce, ch. 6) . As in most pri- 
marily agricultural societies, few individuals can hope to 
achieve economic securitv without being part of a cooperating 
group of kinsmen. The joint familv is also common in cities, 
w r here kinship ties can be crucial to obtaining scarce jobs or 
financial assistance. Numerous prominent Indian families, 
such as the Tatas, Birlas, and Sarabhais, retain joint family 
arrangements even as thev wx>rk together to control some of 
the countrv's largest financial empires. 

The joint familv is an ancient Indian institution, but it has 
undergone some change in the late twentieth centurv. 
Although several Generations livinp: together is the ideal, actual 
living arrangements varv widelv depending on region, social 
status, and economic circumstance. Many Indians live in joint 
families that deviate in various ways from the ideal, and many 
live in nuclear families — a couple with their unmarried chil- 
dren — as is the most common pattern in the West. However, 
even where the ideal joint familv is seldom found (as, for exam- 
ple, in certain regions and among impoverished agricultural 
laborers and urban squatters), there are often strong networks 
of kinship ties through which economic assistance and other 
benefits are obtained. Not infrequently, clusters of relatives live 
very near each other, easilv available to respond to the give and 
take of kinship obligations. Even when relatives cannot actuallv 
live in close proximity, they tvpicallv maintain strong bonds of 
kinship and attempt to provide each other with economic help, 
emotional support, and other benefits. 

As joint families grow ever larger, they inevitably divide into 
smaller units, passing through a predictable cvcle over time. 



242 



Social Systems 



The breakup of a joint family into smaller units does not neces- 
sarily represent the rejection of the joint family ideal. Rather, it 
is usually a response to a variety of conditions, including the 
need for some members to move from village to city, or from 
one city to another to take advantage of employment opportu- 
nities. Splitting of the family is often blamed on quarrelling 
women — typically, the wives of coresident brothers. Although 
women's disputes may, in fact, lead to family division, men's dis- 
agreements do so as well. Despite cultural ideals of brotherly 
harmony, adult brothers frequently quarrel over land and 
other matters, leading them to decide to live under separate 
roofs and divide their property. Frequently, a large joint family 
divides after the demise of elderly parents, when there is no 
longer a single authority figure to hold the family factions 
together. After division, each new residential unit, in its turn, 
usually becomes joint when sons of the family marry and bring 
their wives to live in the family home. 

Variations in Family Structure 

Some family types bear special mention because of their 
unique qualities. In the sub-Himalayan region of Uttar 
Pradesh, polygyny is commonly practiced. There, among Hin- 
dus, a simple polygynous family is composed of a man, his two 
wives, and their unmarried children. Various other family types 
occur there, including the supplemented subpolygynous 
household — a woman whose husband lives elsewhere (perhaps 
with his other wife), her children, plus other adult relatives. 
Polygyny is also practiced in other parts of India by a tiny 
minority of the population, especially in families in which the 
first wife has not been able to bear children. 

Among the Buddhist people of the mountainous Ladakh 
District of Jammu and Kashmir, who have cultural ties to Tibet, 
fraternal polyandry is practiced, and a household may include 
a set of brothers with their common wife or wives. This family 
type, in which brothers also share land, is almost certainly 
linked to the extreme scarcity of cultivable land in the Hima- 
layan region, because it discourages fragmentation of holdings. 

The peoples of the northeastern hill areas are known for 
their matriliny, tracing descent and inheritance in the female 
line rather than the male line. One of the largest of these 
groups, the Khasis — an ethnic or tribal people in the state of 
Meghalaya — are divided into matrilineal clans; the youngest 
daughter receives almost all of the inheritance including the 



243 



India: A Country Study 



house. A Khasi husband goes to live in his wife's house. Khasis, 
many of whom have become Christian, have the highest liter- 
acy rate in India, and Khasi women maintain notable authority 
in the family and community. 

Perhaps the best known of India's unusual family types is the 
traditional Nayar taravad, or great house. The Nayars are a clus- 
ter of castes in Kerala. High-ranking and prosperous, the 
Nayars maintained matrilineal households in which sisters and 
brothers and their children were the permanent residents. 
After an official prepuberty marriage, each woman received a 
series of visiting husbands in her room in the taravad at night. 
Her children were all legitimate members of the taravad. Prop- 
erty, matrilineally inherited, was managed by the eldest brother 
of the senior woman. This system, the focus of much anthropo- 
logical interest, has been disintegrating in the twentieth cen- 
tury, and in the 1990s probably fewer than 5 percent of the 
Nayars live in matrilineal taravads. Like the Khasis, Nayar 
women are known for being well-educated and powerful within 
the family. 

Malabar rite Christians, an ancient community in Kerala, 
adopted many practices of their powerful Nayar neighbors, 
including naming their sons for matrilineal forebears. Their 
kinship system, however, is patrilineal. Kerala Christians have a 
very high literacy rate, as do most Indian Christian groups (see 
Christianity, ch. 3). 

Large Kinship Groups 

In most of Hindu India, people belong not only to coresi- 
dent family groups but to larger aggregates of kin as well. Sub- 
suming the family is the patrilineage (known in northern and 
central India as the khandan, kutumb, or kul), a locally based set 
of males who trace their ancestry to a common progenitor a 
few generations back, plus their wives and unmarried daugh- 
ters. Larger than the patrilineage is the clan, commonly known 
as the gotra or got, a much larger group of patrilineally related 
males and their wives and daughters, who often trace common 
ancestry to a mythological figure. In some regions, particularly 
among the high-ranking Rajputs of western India, clans are 
hierarchically ordered. Some people also claim membership in 
larger, more amorphous groupings known as vansh and sakha. 

Hindu lineages and clans are strictly exogamous — that is, a 
person may not marry or have a sexual alliance with a member 
of his own lineage or clan; such an arrangement would be con- 



244 



Social Systems 



sidered incestuous. In North India, rules further prohibit mar- 
riage between a person and his mother's lineage members as 
well. Among some high-ranking castes of the north, exogamy is 
also extended to the mother's, father's mother's, and mother's 
mother's clans. In contrast, in South India, marriage to a mem- 
ber of the mother's kin group is often encouraged. 

Muslims also recognize kinship groupings larger than the 
family. These include the khandan, or patrilineage, and the aziz- 
dar, or kindred. The azizdar group differs slightly for each indi- 
vidual and includes all relatives linked to a person by blood or 
marriage. Muslims throughout India encourage marriage 
within the lineage and kindred, and marriages between the 
children of siblings are common. 

Within a village or urban neighborhood, members of a lin- 
eage recognize their kinship in a variety of ways. Mutual assis- 
tance in daily work, in emergencies, and in factional struggles 
is expected. For Hindus, cooperation in specific annual rituals 
helps define the kin group. For example, in many areas, at the 
worship of the goddess deemed responsible for the welfare of 
the lineage, patrilineally related males and their wives join in 
the rites and consume specially consecrated fried breads or 
other foods. Unmarried daughters of the lineage are only spec- 
tators at the rites and do not share in the special foods. Upon 
marriage, a woman becomes a member of her husband's lin- 
eage and then participates regularly in the worship of her hus- 
band's lineage goddess. Lineage bonds are also evident at life- 
cycle observances, when kin join together in celebrating births, 
marriages, and religious initiations. Upon the death of a lin- 
eage member, other lineage members observe ritual death pol- 
lution rules for a prescribed number of days and carry out 
appropriate funeral rites and feasts. 

For some castes, especially in the north, careful records of 
lineage ties are kept by a professional genealogist, a member of 
a caste whose traditional task is maintaining genealogical 
tomes. These itinerant bards make their rounds from village to 
village over the course of a year or more, recording births, 
deaths, and glorious accomplishments of the patrilineal 
descent group. These genealogical services have been espe- 
cially crucial among Rajputs, Jats, and similar groups whose lin- 
eages own land and where power can depend on fine 
calculations of pedigree and inheritance rights. 

Some important kinship linkages are not traced through 
men but through women. These linkages involve those related 



245 



India: A Country Study 



to an individual by blood and marriage through a mother, mar- 
ried sisters, or married daughters, and for a man, through his 
wife. Anthropologist David Mandelbaum has termed these 
"feminal kin." Key relationships are those between a brother 
and sister, parents and daughters, and a person and his or her 
mother's brother. Through bonds with these close kin, a per- 
son has links with several households and lineages in many set- 
tlements. Throughout most of India, there are continuous 
visits — some of which may last for months and include the 
exchange of gifts at visits, life-cycle rites, and holidays, and 
many other key interactions between such relatives. These rela- 
tionships are often characterized by deep affection and will- 
ingly offered support. 

These ties cut across the countryside, linking each person 
with kin in villages and towns near and far. Almost everywhere 
a villager goes — especially in the north, where marriage net- 
works cover wide distances — he can find some kind of relative. 
Moral support, a place to stay, economic assistance, and politi- 
cal backing are all available through these kinship networks. 

The multitude of kinship ties is further extended through 
the device of fictive kinship. Residents of a single village usually 
use kinship terms for one another, and especially strong ties of 
fictive kinship can be ceremonially created with fellow religious 
initiates or fellow pilgrims of one's village or neighborhood. In 
the villages and cities of the north, on the festival of Raksha 
Bandhan (the Tying of the Protective Thread, during which sis- 
ters tie sacred threads on their brothers' wrists to symbolize the 
continuing bond between them), a female may tie a thread on 
the wrist of an otherwise unrelated male and "make him her 
brother." Fictive kinship bonds cut across caste and class lines 
and involve obligations of hospitality, gift-giving, and variable 
levels of cooperation and assistance. 

Neighbors and friends may also create fictive kinship ties by 
informal agreement. Actually, any strong friendship between 
otherwise unrelated people is typically imbued with kinship- 
like qualities. In such friendships, kinship terms are adopted 
for address, and the give and take of kinship may develop. Such 
bonds commonly evolve between neighbors in urban apart- 
ment buildings, between special friends at school, and between 
close associates at work. The use of kinship terms enhances 
affection in the relationship. In Gujarat, personal names usu- 
ally include the word for "sister" and "brother," so that the use 



246 



Social Systems 



of someone's personal name automatically sounds affectionate 
and caring. 

Family Authority and Harmony 

In the Indian household, lines of hierarchy and authority 
are clearly drawn, shaping structurally and psychologically 
complex family relationships. Ideals of conduct are aimed at 
creating and maintaining family harmony. 

All family members are socialized to accept the authority of 
those ranked above them in the hierarchy. In general, elders 
rank above juniors, and among people of similar age, males 
outrank females. Daughters of a family command the formal 
respect of their brothers' wives, and the mother of a household 
is in charge of her daughters-in-law. Among adults in a joint 
family, a newly arrived daughter-in-law has the least authority. 
Males learn to command others within the household but 
expect to accept the direction of senior males. Ideally, even a 
mature adult man living in his father's household acknowl- 
edges his father's authority on both minor and major matters. 
Women are especially strongly socialized to accept a position 
subservient to males, to control their sexual impulses, and to 
subordinate their personal preferences to the needs of the fam- 
ily and kin group. Reciprocally, those in authority accept 
responsibility for meeting the needs of others in the family 
group. 

There is tremendous emphasis on the unity of the family 
grouping, especially as differentiated from persons outside the 
kinship circle. Internally, efforts are made to deemphasize ties 
between spouses and between parents and their own children 
in order to enhance a wider sense of harmony within the entire 
household. Husbands and wives are discouraged from openly 
displaying affection for one another, and in strictly traditional 
households, they may not even properly speak to one another 
in the presence of anyone else, even their own children. Young 
parents are inhibited by "shame" from ostentatiously dandling 
their own young children but are encouraged to play with the 
children of siblings. 

Psychologically, family members feel an intense emotional 
interdependence with each other and the family as an almost 
organic unit. Ego boundaries are permeable to others in the 
family, and any notion of a separate self is often dominated by a 
sense of what psychoanalyst Alan Roland has termed a more 
inclusive "familial self." Interpersonal empathy, closeness, loy- 



247 



India: A Country Study 

alty, and interdependency are all crucial to life within the fam- 
ily. 

Family resources, particularly land or businesses, have tradi- 
tionally been controlled by family males, especially in high-sta- 
tus groups. Customarily, according to traditional schools of 
Hindu law, women did not inherit land or buildings and were 
thus beholden to their male kin who controlled these vital 
resources. Under Muslim customary law, women are entitled to 
inherit real estate and often do so, but their shares have typi- 
cally been smaller than those of similarly situated males. Under 
modern law, all Indian women can inherit land. 

Veiling and the Seclusion of Women 

A particularly interesting aspect of Indian family life is pur- 
dah (from the Hindi parda, literally, curtain), or the veiling and 
seclusion of women. In much of northern and central India, 
particularly in rural areas, Hindu and Muslim women follow 
complex rules of veiling the body and avoidance of public 
appearance, especially in the presence of relatives linked by 
marriage and before strange men. Purdah practices are inextri- 
cably linked to patterns of authority and harmony within the 
family. Rules of Hindu and Muslim purdah differ in certain key 
ways, but female modesty and decorum as well as concepts of 
family honor are essential to the various forms of purdah. In 
most areas, purdah restrictions are stronger for women of high- 
status families. 

The importance of purdah is not limited to family life; 
rather, these practices all involve restrictions on female activity 
and access to power and the control of vital resources in a 
male-dominated society. Restriction and restraint for women in 
virtually every aspect of life are the basic essentials of purdah. 
In India, both males and females are circumscribed in their 
actions by economic disabilities, hierarchical rules of defer- 
ence in kinship groups, castes, and the larger society. But for 
women who observe purdah, there are additional constraints. 

For almost all women, modest dress and behavior are impor- 
tant. Clothing covering most of the body is common; only in 
tribal groups and among a few castes do women publicly bare 
their legs or upper bodies. In most of the northern half of 
India, traditionally dressed women cover the tops of their 
heads with the end of the sari or scarf (dupatta). Generally, 
females are expected to associate only with kin or companions 
approved by their families and to remain sexually chaste. 



248 



Social Systems 



Women are not encouraged to roam about on pleasure jun- 
kets, but rather travel only for explicit family-sanctioned pur- 
poses. In North India, women do relatively little shopping; 
most shopping is done by men. In contrast to females, males 
have much more freedom of movement and observe much less 
body modesty. 

For both males and females, free association with the oppo- 
site sex is limited, and dating in the Western sense is essentially 
limited to members of the educated urban elite. In all areas, 
illicit liaisons do occur. Although the male may escape social 
repudiation if such liaisons become known, the female may suf- 
fer lasting damage to her own reputation and bring dishonor 
to her family. Further, if a woman is sexually linked with a man 
of lower caste status, the woman is regarded as being irremedi- 
ably polluted, "like an earthen pot." A male so sullied can be 
cleansed of his temporary pollution, "like a brass pot," with a 
ritual bath. 

Such rules of feminine modesty are not considered purdah 
but merely proper female behavior. For traditional Hindus of 
northern and central India, purdah observances begin at mar- 
riage, when a woman acquires a husband and in-laws. Although 
she almost never observes purdah in her natal home or before 
her natal relatives, a woman does observe purdah in her hus- 
band's home and before his relatives. As a young woman, she 
remains inside her husband's house much of the time (rather 
than going out into lanes or fields), absents herself or covers 
her face with her sari in the presence of senior males and 
females related by marriage, and, when she does leave the 
house in her marital village, covers her face with Jrer sari. 

Through use of the end of the sari as a face veil and defer- 
ence of manner, a married woman shows respect to her affinal 
kin who are older than or equal to her husband in age, as well 
as certain other relatives. She may speak to the women before 
whom she veils, but she usually does not converse with the 
men. Exceptions to this are her husband's younger brothers, 
before whom she may veil her face, but with whom she has a 
warm joking relationship involving verbal banter. 

Initially almost faceless and voiceless in her marital home, a 
married woman matures and gradually relaxes some of these 
practices, especially as elder in-laws become senescent or die 
and she herself assumes senior status. In fact, after some years, 
a wife may neglect to veil her face in front of her husband 



249 



India: A Country Study 



when others are present and may even speak to her husband in 
public. 

Such practices help shield women from unwanted male 
advances and control women's sexuality but also express rela- 
tions within and between groups of kin. Familial prestige, 
household harmony, social distance, affinal respect, property 
ownership, and local political power are all linked to purdah. 

Restricting women to household endeavors rather than 
involving them in tasks in fields and markets is associated with 
prestige and high rank in northern India. There the wealthiest 
families employ servants to carry water from the well and to 
work in the fields alongside family males. Mature women of 
these families may make rare appearances in the fields to bring 
lunch to the family males working there and sometimes to 
supervise laborers. Thus elitism is expressed in women's exclu- 
sive domesticity, with men providing economic necessities for 
the family. 

Only women of poor and low-ranking groups engage in 
heavy manual labor outside the home, especially for pay. Such 
women work long hours in the fields, on construction gangs, 
and at many other tasks, often veiling their faces as they work. 

For Muslim women, purdah practices involve less emphasis 
on veiling from in-laws and more emphasis on protecting 
women from contact with strangers outside the sphere of kin- 
ship. Because Muslims often marry cousins, a woman's in-laws 
may also be her natal relatives, so veiling her face within the 
marital home is often inappropriate. Unlike Hindus, Muslim 
women do not veil from other women as do Hindus. Tradi- 
tional Muslim women and even unmarried girls, however, often 
refrain from appearing in public, or if they do go out, they 
wear an all-covering garment known as a burka, with a full face 
covering. A burka protects a woman — and her family — from 
undue familiarity with unknown outsiders, thus emphasizing 
the unity of the family vis-a-vis the outside world. Because Mus- 
lim women are entitled to a share in the family real estate, con- 
trolling their relationships with males outside the family can be 
crucial to the maintenance of family property and prestige. 

In rural communities and in older sections of cities, purdah 
observances remain vital, although they are gradually diminish- 
ing in intensity. Among the educated urban and rural elite, 
purdah practices are rapidly vanishing and for many have all 
but disappeared. Chastity and female modesty are still highly 
valued, but, for the elite, face-veiling and the burka are consid- 



250 



Rajasthani village women and children participate in a 

wedding ritual. 
Courtesy Janice Hyde 

ered unsophisticated. As girls and women become more widely 
and more highly educated, female employment outside the 
home is commonplace, even for women of elite families. 

Life Passages 

In India, the ideal stages of life have been most clearly articu- 
lated by Hindus. The ancient Hindu ideal rests on childhood, 
followed by four stages: undergoing religious initiation and 
becoming a celibate student of religious texts, getting married 
and becoming a householder, leaving home to become a forest 
hermit after becoming a grandparent, and becoming a home- 
less wanderer free of desire for all material things. Although 
few actually follow this scheme, it serves as a guide for those 
attempting to live according to valued standards. For Hindus, 



251 



India: A Country Study 

dharma (a divinely ordained code of proper conduct), karma 
(the sum of one's deeds in this life and in past lives), and kismat 
(fate) are considered relevant to the course of life (see The 
Roots of Indian Religion, ch. 3). Crucial transitions from one 
phase of life to another are marked by sometimes elaborate 
rites of passage. 

Children and Childhood 

Throughout much of India, a baby's birth is celebrated with 
rites of welcome and blessing — songs, drums, happy distribu- 
tion of sweets, auspicious unguents, gifts for infant and mother, 
preparation of horoscopes, and inscriptions in the genealo- 
gist's record books. In general, children are deeply desired and 
welcomed, their presence regarded as a blessing on the house- 
hold. Babies are often treated like small deities, pampered and 
coddled, adorned with makeup and trinkets, and carried about 
and fed with the finest foods available to the family. Young girls 
are worshiped as personifications of Hindu goddesses, and lit- 
tle boys are adulated as scions of the clan. 

In their children, parents see the future of the lineage and 
wider kin group, helpers in daily tasks, and providers of secu- 
rity in the parents' old age. These delightful ideals are articu- 
lated and enacted over and over again; yet, a coexisting harsher 
reality emerges from a close examination of events and statis- 
tics. Many children lead lives of striking hardship, and many 
die premature deaths. In general, conditions are significantly 
worse for girls than for boys. 

Birth celebrations for baby daughters are more muted than 
for sons and are sometimes absent altogether. Although India 
was once led by a woman prime minister, Indira Gandhi, and 
Indian women currently hold a wide range of powerful posi- 
tions in every walk of life, there is a strong cultural bias toward 
males. Girls are frequently victims of underfeeding, medical 
neglect, sex-selective abortion, and outright infanticide. 
According to the 1991 census final population totals, there 
were 927 females per 1,000 males in India — a figure that has 
gradually declined from 972 females per 1,000 males in 1901 
and from 934 just since 1981. Much of this imbalance is 
attained through neglecting the nutritional and health needs 
of female children, and much is also the result of inadequate 
health care for women of childbearing years. The sex ratio is 
even more imbalanced in urban areas (894 per 1,000 in 1991) 
than in rural areas (938 per 1,000 in 1991), partially because a 



252 



Social Systems 



large number of village men go to work in cities, leaving their 
wives and children behind in their rural homes (see Structure 
and Dynamics, ch. 2). 

That girls are victims of fatal neglect and murder has been 
thoroughly discussed in the Indian press and in scholarly inves- 
tigations. It has been noted that infant girls are killed with 
potions of opium in Rajasthan and pastes of poisonous olean- 
der in Tamil Nadu — most especially girls preceded by the birth 
of several sisters. Clinics offering ultrasound and amniocentesis 
in order to detect and abort female fetuses have become popu- 
lar in various parts of the country, and many thousands of 
female fetuses have been so destroyed. In Maharashtra, Rajast- 
han, and Punjab such selective abortions have been outlawed 
•because of pressure from feminist groups. More usually, girls 
are simply fed and cared for less well than their brothers. 

The sex ratio is particularly unfavorable to females in the 
central northern section of the country. For example, in Uttar 
Pradesh there are only eighty-eight females per 100 males; in 
Haryana, eighty-seven per 100; and in Rajasthan ninety-one per 
100. By contrast, in Kerala, on the southwest coast, a region tra- 
ditionally noted for matriliny, the sex ratio is reversed, with 
females outnumbering males 104 to 100. In Andhra Pradesh 
and Tamil Nadu, two large southern states, there are ninety- 
seven females per 100 males. 

Parents favor boys for various reasons. In the north, a boy's 
value in agricultural endeavors is higher than a girl's, and after 
marriage a boy continues to live with his parents, ideally sup- 
porting them in their old age. Political scientist Philip Olden- 
burg notes that in some violence-prone regions of the north, 
having sons may enhance families' capacity to defend them- 
selves and to exercise power. A girl, however, moves away to live 
with her husband's relatives, and with her goes a dowry. In the 
late twentieth century, the values of dowries have been increas- 
ing, and, furthermore, groups that never gave dowries in the 
past are being pressured to do so. Thus, a girl child can repre- 
sent a significant economic liability to her parents. In rice- 
growing areas, especially in the south, girls receive better treat- 
ment, and there is some evidence that the better treatment is 
related to the value of women as field workers in wet-rice culti- 
vation. Throughout most of India, for Hindus it is important to 
have a son conduct funeral rites for his parents; a daughter, as a 
member of her husband's lineage, has not traditionally been 
able to do so. 



253 



India: A Country Study 

For both boys and girls, infant mortality rates tend to be 
high, and in the absence of confidence that their infants will 
live, parents tend to produce numerous offspring in the hope 
that at least two sons will survive to adulthood. Family planning 
measures are used to a modest degree in India; perhaps 37.5 
percent of couples use contraceptives at least occasionally (see 
Population and Family Planning Policy, ch. 2). Abortion is 
legal, condoms are advertised on colorful billboards, and gov- 
ernment health services offer small bounties for patients 
undergoing vasectomies and tubal ligations. In some regions, 
most notably Kerala, better health care and higher infant sur- 
vival rates are associated with lowered fertility rates (see Health 
Conditions, ch. 2). 

Most children survive infancy and do not fall victim to the 
cultural and economic pressures alluded to above. The major- 
itv of children grow up as valued members of a family, trea- 
sured by their parents and encouraged to participate in 
appropriate activities. Although relative ages of children are 
alwavs known and reflected in linguistic and deference behav- 
ior, there is little asre-STadine: in dailv life. Children of all asres 
associate with each other and with adults, unlike the situation 
in the West, where age-grading is common. 

Studies of Indian psychology by Sudhir Kakar, Alan Roland, 
and others stress that the young Indian child grows up in inti- 
mate emotional contact with the mother and other mothering 
persons. Because conjugal marital relationships are deempha- 
sized in the joint household, a woman looks to her children to 
satisfy some of her intimacy needs. Her bond to her children, 
especially her sons but also her daughters, becomes enor- 
mously strong and lasting:. A child is suckled on demand, some- 
times for years, sleeps with a parent or grandparent, is bathed 
by doting relatives, and is rarely left alone. Massaged with oil, 
carried about, gently toilet-trained, and gratified with treats, 
the young child develops an inner core of well-being and a pro- 
found sense of expectation of protection from others. Such 
indulgent and close relationships produce a symbiotic mode of 
relating to others and effect the development of a person with 
a deeply held sense of involvement with relatives, so vital to the 
Indian family situation. 

The young child learns early about hierarchy within the fam- 
ily, as he watches affectionate and respectful relationships 
between seniors and juniors, males and females. A young child 
is often carried about bv an older sibling, and strong and close 



254 



Social Systems 



sibling bonds usually develop. Bickering among siblings is not 
as common as it is in the West; rather, most siblings learn to 
think of themselves as part of a family unit that must work 
together as it meets the challenges of the outside world. 

Young children are encouraged to participate in the numer- 
ous rituals that emphasize family ties. The power of sibling rela- 
tionships is recognized, for example, when a brother touches 
his sister's feet, honoring in her the principle of feminine divin- 
ity, which, if treated appropriately, can bring him prosperity. In 
calendrical and life-cycle rituals in both the north and the 
south, sisters bless their brothers and also symbolically request 
their protection throughout life. 

After about four or five years of indulgence, children typi- 
cally experience greater demands from family members. In vil- 
lages, children learn the rudiments of agricultural labor, and 
young children often help with weeding, harvesting, threshing, 
and the like. Girls learn domestic chores, and boys are encour- 
aged to take cattle for grazing, learn plowing, and begin to 
drive bullock carts and ride bicycles. City children also learn 
household duties, and children of poor families often work as 
servants in the homes of the prosperous. Some even pick 
through garbage piles to find shreds of food and fuel. 

In some areas, children work as exploited laborers in facto- 
ries, where they weave carpets for the export market and make 
matches, glass bangles, and other products. At Sivakasi, in 
Tamil Nadu, some 45,000 children work in the match, fire- 
works, and printing industries, comprising perhaps the largest 
single concentration of child labor in the world. Children 
reportedly as young as four years old work long hours each day. 

Education in a school setting is available for most of India's 
children, and many young people attend school (see Primary 
and Secondary Education, ch. 2). Officials state that education 
is "compulsory," but the reality is that a significant percentage 
of children — especially girls — fail to become literate and 
instead carry out many other tasks in order to contribute to 
family income. More than half of India's children between the 
ages of six and fourteen — 82.2 million — are not in school. 
Instead they participate in the labor force, even as more privi- 
leged children study at government and private schools and 
prepare for more prestigious jobs. Thus children learn early 
the realities of socioeconomic and urban-rural differentiation 
and grow up to perpetuate India's hierarchical society. 



255 



India: A Country Study 



For many children, especially boys, an important event of 
young adolescence is religious initiation. Initiation rituals vary 
among different regions, religious communities, and castes 
(see Life-Cycle Rituals, ch. 3). In the north, girls reach puberty 
without public notice and in an atmosphere of shyness, 
whereas in much of the south, puberty celebrations joyously 
announce to the family and community that a young girl has 
grown to maturity 

Marriage 

In India there is no greater event in a family than a wedding, 
dramatically evoking every possible social obligation, kinship 
bond, traditional value, impassioned sentiment, and economic 
resource. In the arranging and conducting of weddings, the 
complex permutations of Indian social systems best display 
themselves. 

Marriage is deemed essential for virtually everyone in India. 
For the individual, marriage is the great watershed in life, 
marking the transition to adulthood. Generally, this transition, 
like everything else in India, depends little upon individual 
volition but instead occurs as a result of the efforts of many 
people. Even as one is born into a particular family without the 
exercise of any personal choice, so is one given a spouse with- 
out any personal preference involved. Arranging a marriage is 
a critical responsibility for parents and other relatives of both 
bride and groom. Marriage alliances entail some redistribution 
of wealth as well as building and restructuring social realign- 
ments, and, of course, result in the biological reproduction of 
families. 

Some parents begin marriage arrangements on the birth of 
a child, but most wait until later. In the past, the age of mar- 
riage was quite young, and in a few small groups, especially in 
Rajasthan, children under the age of five are still united in mar- 
riage. In rural communities, prepuberty marriage for girls tra- 
ditionally was the rule. In the late twentieth century, the age of 
marriage is rising in villages, almost to the levels that obtain in 
cities. Legislation mandating minimum marriage ages has been 
passed in various forms over the past decades, but such laws 
have little effect on actual marriage practices. 

Essentially, India is divided into two large regions with 
regard to Hindu kinship and marriage practices, the north and 
the south. Additionally, various ethnic and tribal groups of the 
central, mountainous north, and eastern regions follow a vari- 



256 



Social Systems 



ety of other practices. These variations have been extensively 
described and analyzed by anthropologists, especially Irawati 
Karve, David G. Mandelbaum, and Clarence Maloney. 

Broadly, in the Indo-Aryan-speaking north, a family seeks 
marriage alliances with people to whom it is not already linked 
by ties of blood. Marriage arrangements often involve looking 
far afield. In the Dravidian-speaking south, a family seeks to 
strengthen existing kin ties through marriage, preferably with 
blood relatives. Kinship terminology reflects this basic pattern. 
In the north, every kinship term clearly indicates whether the 
person referred to is a blood relation or an affinal relation; all 
blood relatives are forbidden as marriage mates to a person or 
a person's children. In the south, there is no clear-cut distinc- 
tion between the family of birth and the family of marriage. 
Because marriage in the south commonly involves a continuing 
exchange of daughters among a few families, for the married 
couple all relatives are ultimately blood kin. Dravidian termi- 
nology stresses the principle of relative age: all relatives are 
arranged according to whether they are older or younger than 
each other without reference to generation. 

On the Indo-Gangetic Plain, marriages are contracted out- 
side the village, sometimes even outside of large groups of vil- 
lages, with members of the same caste beyond any traceable 
consanguineal ties. In much of the area, daughters should not 
be given into villages where daughters of the family or even of 
the natal village have previously been given. In most of the 
region, brother-sister exchange marriages (marriages linking a 
brother and sister of one household with the sister and brother 
of another) are shunned. The entire emphasis is on casting the 
marriage net ever-wider, creating new alliances. The residents 
of a single village may have in-laws in hundreds of other vil- 
lages. 

In most of North India, the Hindu bride goes to live with 
strangers in a home she has never visited. There she is seques- 
tered and veiled, an outsider who must learn to conform to 
new ways. Her natal family is often geographically distant, and 
her ties with her consanguineal kin undergo attenuation to 
varying degrees. 

In central India, the basic North Indian pattern prevails, 
with some modifications. For example, in Madhya Pradesh, vil- 
lage exogamy is preferred, but marriages within a village are 
not uncommon. Marriages between caste-fellows in neighbor- 
ing villages are frequent. Brother-sister exchange marriages are 



257 



India: A Country Study 



sometimes arranged, and daughters are often given in mar- 
riage to lineages where other daughters of their lineage or vil- 
lage have previously been wed. 

In South India, in sharp contrast, marriages are preferred 
between cousins (especially cross-cousins, that is, the children 
of a brother and sister) and even between uncles and nieces 
(especially a man and his elder sister's daughter). The princi- 
ple involved is that of return — the family that gives a daughter 
expects one in return, if not now, then in the next generation. 
The effect of such marriages is to bind people together in rela- 
tively small, tight-knit kin groups. A bride moves to her in-laws' 
home — the home of her grandmother or aunt — and is often 
comfortable among these familiar faces. Her husband may well 
be the cousin she has known all her life that she would marry. 

Many South Indian marriages are contracted outside of such 
close kin groups when no suitable mates exist among close rela- 
tives, or when other options appear more advantageous. Some 
sophisticated South Indians, for example, consider cousin mar- 
riage and uncle-niece marriage outmoded. 

Rules for the remarriage of widows differ from one group to 
another. Generally, lower-ranking groups allow widow remar- 
riage, particularly if the woman is relatively young, but the 
highest-ranking castes discourage or forbid such remarriage. 
The most strict adherents to the nonremarriage of widows are 
Brahmans. Almost all groups allow widowers to remarry. Many 
groups encourage a widower to marry his deceased wife's 
younger sister (but never her older sister). 

Among Muslims of both the north and the south, marriage 
between cousins is encouraged, both cross-cousins (the chil- 
dren of a brother and sister) and parallel cousins (the children 
of two same-sex siblings). In the north, such cousins grow up 
calling each other "brother" and "sister", yet they may marry. 
Even when cousin marriage does not occur, spouses can often 
trace between them other kinship linkages. 

Some tribal people of central India practice an interesting 
permutation of the southern pattern. Among the Murias of 
Bastar in southeastern Madhya Pradesh, as described by 
anthropologist Verrier Elwin, teenagers live together in a dor- 
mitory (ghotul), sharing life and love with one another for sev- 
eral blissful years. Ultimately, their parents arrange their 
marriages, usually with cross-cousins, and the delights of teen- 
age romance are replaced with the serious responsibilities of 
adulthood. In his survey of some 2,000 marriages, Elwin found 



258 



Jain wedding ceremony, with 
bride, groom, and sacred fire, 
Jodhpur, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 




only seventy-seven cases of ghotul partners eloping together 
and very few cases of divorce. Among the Muria and Gond 
tribal groups, cross-cousin marriage is called "bringing back 
the milk," alluding to the gift of a girl in one generation being 
returned by the gift of a girl in the next. 

Finding the perfect partner for one's child can be a chal- 
lenging task. People use their social networks to locate poten- 
tial brides and grooms of appropriate social and economic 
status. Increasingly, urban dwellers use classified matrimonial 
advertisements in newspapers. The advertisements usually 
announce religion, caste, and educational qualifications, stress 
female beauty and male (and in the contemporary era, some- 
times female) earning capacity, and may hint at dowry size. 

In rural areas, matches between strangers are usually 
arranged without the couple meeting each other. Rather, par- 
ents and other relatives come to an agreement on behalf of the 
couple. In cities, however, especially among the educated 
classes, photographs are exchanged, and sometimes the couple 
are allowed to meet under heavily chaperoned circumstances, 
such as going out for tea with a group of people or meeting in 
the parlor of the girl's home, with her relatives standing by. 
Young professional men and their families may receive inquir- 
ies and photographs from representatives of several girls' fami- 
lies. They may send their relatives to meet the most promising 



259 



India: A Country Study 



candidates and then go on tour themselves to meet the young 
women and make a final choice. In the early 1990s, increasing 
numbers of marriages arranged in this way link brides and 
grooms from India with spouses of Indian parentage resident 
in Europe, North America, and the Middle East. 

Almost all Indian children are raised with the expectation 
that their parents will arrange their marriages, but an increas- 
ing number of young people, especially among the college- 
educated, are finding their own spouses. So-called love mar- 
riages are deemed a slightly scandalous alternative to properly 
arranged marriages. Some young people convince their par- 
ents to "arrange" their marriages to people with whom they 
have fallen in love. This process has long been possible for 
Indians from the south and for Muslims who want to marry a 
particular cousin of the appropriate marriageable category. In 
the upper classes, these semi-arranged love marriages increas- 
ingly occur between young people who are from castes of 
slightly different rank but who are educationally or profession- 
ally equal. If there are vast differences to overcome, such as is 
the case with love marriages between Hindus and Muslims or 
between Hindus of very different caste status, parents are usu- 
ally much less agreeable, and serious family disruptions can 
result. 

In much of India, especially in the north, a marriage estab- 
lishes a structural opposition between the kin groups of the 
bride and groom — bride-givers and bride-takers. Within this 
relationship, bride-givers are considered inferior to bride-tak- 
ers and are forever expected to give gifts to the bride-takers. 
The one-way flow of gifts begins at engagement and continues 
for a generation or two. The most dramatic aspect of this asym- 
metrical relationship is the giving of dowry. 

In many communities throughout India, a dowry has tradi- 
tionally been given by a bride's kin at the time of her marriage. 
In ancient times, the dowry was considered a woman's wealth — 
property due a beloved daughter who had no claim on her 
natal family's real estate — and typically included portable valu- 
ables such as jewelry and household goods that a bride could 
control throughout her life. However, over time, the larger pro- 
portion of the dowry has come to consist of goods and cash 
payments that go straight into the hands of the groom's family. 
In the late twentieth century, throughout much of India, dowry 
payments have escalated, and a groom's parents sometimes 
insist on compensation for their son's higher education and 



260 



Social Systems 



even for his future earnings, to which the bride will presumably 
have access. Some of the dowries demanded are quite oppres- 
sive, amounting to several years' salary in cash as well as items 
such as motorcycles, air conditioners, and fancy cars. Among 
some lower-status groups, large dowries are currently replacing 
traditional bride-price payments. Even among Muslims, previ- 
ously not given to demanding large dowries, reports of exorbi- 
tant dowries are increasing. 

The dowry is becoming an increasingly onerous burden for 
the bride's family. Antidowry laws exist but are largely ignored, 
and a bride's treatment in her marital home is often affected by 
the value of her dowry. Increasingly frequent are horrible inci- 
dents, particularly in urban areas, where a groom's family 
makes excessive demands on the bride's family — even after 
marriage — and when the demands are not met, murder the 
bride, typically by setting her clothes on fire in a cooking "acci- 
dent." The groom is then free to remarry and collect another 
sumptuous dowry. The male and female in-laws implicated in 
these murders have seldom been punished. 

Such dowry deaths have been the subject of numerous 
media reports in India and other countries and have mobilized 
feminist groups to action. In some of the worst areas, such as 
the National Capital Territory of Delhi, where hundreds of 
such deaths are reported annually and the numbers are 
increasing yearly, the law now requires that all suspicious 
deaths of new brides be investigated. Official government fig- 
ures report 1,786 registered dowry deaths nationwide in 1987; 
there is also an estimate of some 5,000 dowry deaths in 1991. 
Women's groups sometimes picket the homes of the in-laws of 
burned brides. Some analysts have related the growth of this 
phenomenon to the growth of consumerism in Indian society. 

Fears of impoverishing their parents have led some urban 
middle-class young women, married and unmarried, to commit 
suicide. However, through the giving of large dowries, the 
newly wealthy are often able to marry their treasured daughters 
up the status hierarchy so reified in Indian society. 

After marriage arrangements are completed, a rich panoply 
of wedding rituals begins. Each religious group, region, and 
caste has a slightly different set of rites. Generally, all weddings 
involve as many kin and associates of the bride and groom as 
possible. The bride's family usually hosts most of the ceremo- 
nies and pays for all the arrangements for large numbers of 
guests for several days, including accommodation, feasting, 



261 



India: A Country Study 

decorations, and gifts for the groom's party. These arrange- 
ments are often extremely elaborate and expensive and are 
intended to enhance the status of the bride's family. The 
groom's party usually hires a band and brings fine gifts for the 
bride, such as jewelry and clothing, but these are typically far 
outweighed in value by the presents received from the bride's 
side. 

After the bride and groom are united in sacred rites 
attended by colorful ceremony, the new bride may be carried 
away to her in-laws' home, or, if she is very young, she may 
remain with her parents until they deem her old enough to 
depart. A prepubescent bride usually stays in her natal home 
until puberty, after which a separate consummation ceremony 
is held to mark her departure for her conjugal home and mar- 
ried life. The poignancy of the bride's weeping departure for 
her new home is prominent in personal memory, folklore, lit- 
erature, song, and drama throughout India. 

Adulthood 

In their new status, a young married couple begin to accept 
adult responsibilities. These include work inside and outside of 
the home, childbearing and childrearing, developing and 
maintaining social relationships, fulfilling religious obligations, 
and enhancing family prosperity and prestige as much as possi- 
ble. 

The young husband usually remains resident with his natal 
family, surrounded by well-known relatives and neighbors. The 
young bride, however, is typically thrust into a strange house- 
hold, where she is expected to follow ideal patterns of chaste 
and cheerfully obedient behavior. 

Ideally, the Hindu wife should honor her husband as if he 
were her personal god. Through her marriage, a woman 
becomes an auspicious wife (suhagan), adorned with bangles 
and amulets designed to protect her husband's life and imbued 
with ritual powers to influence prosperity and procreation. At 
her wedding, the Hindu bride is likened to Lakshmi, the God- 
dess of Wealth, in symbolic recognition of the fact that the 
groom's patrilineage can increase and prosper only through 
her fertility and labors. Despite this simile, elegantly stated in 
the nuptial ritual, the young wife is pressed into service as the 
most subordinate member of her husband's family. If any mis- 
fortunes happen to befall her affinal family after her arrival, 
she may be blamed as the bearer of bad luck. Not surprisingly, 



262 



Social Systems 



some young women find adjusting to these new circumstances 
extremely upsetting. A small percentage experience psycholog- 
ical distress so severe that they seem to be possessed by outspo- 
ken ghosts and spirits. 

In these difficult early days of a marriage, and later on 
throughout her life, a woman looks to her natal kin for moral 
and often economic support. Although she has become part of 
another household and lineage, she depends on her natal rela- 
tives — especially her brothers — to back her up in a variety of 
circumstances. A wide range of long visits home, ritual obliga- 
tions, gifts, folklore, and songs reflect the significance of a 
woman's lifelong ties to her blood relatives. 

By producing children, especially highly valued sons, and, 
ultimately, becoming a mother-in-law herself, a woman gradu- 
ally improves her position within the conjugal household. In 
motherhood the married woman finds social approval, eco- 
nomic security, and emotional satisfaction. 

A man and his wife owe respect and obedience to his parents 
and other senior relatives. Ideally, all cooperate in the joint 
family enterprise. Gradually, as the years pass, members of the 
younger generation take the place of the older generation and 
become figures of authority and respect. As this transition 
occurs, it is generally assumed that younger family members 
will physically care for and support elders until their demise. 

In their adult years, men and women engage in a wide vari- 
ety of tasks and occupations strongly linked to socioeconomic 
status, including caste membership, wealth, place of residence, 
and many other factors. In general, the higher the status of a 
family, the less likely its members are to engage in manual 
labor and the more likely its members are to be served by 
employees of lower status. Although educated women are 
increasingly working outside the home, even in urbane circles 
some negative stigma is still attached to women's employment. 
In addition, students from high-status families do not work at 
temporary menial jobs as they do in many Western countries. 

People of low status work at the many menial tasks that high- 
status people disdain. Poor women cannot afford to abstain 
from paid labor, and they work alongside their menfolk in the 
fields and at construction projects. In low-status families, 
women are less likely than high-status women to unquestion- 
ingly accept the authority of men and even of elders because 
they are directly responsible for providing income for the fam- 
ily. Among Sweepers, very low-status latrine cleaners, women 



263 



India: A Country Study 

carry out more of the -aditional tasks than do men and hold a 
relatively less subordinate position in their families than do 
women of traditional high-status families. Such women are, 
nonetheless, less powerful in the society at large than are 
women of economically prosperous high-status families, who 
control and influence the control of more assets than do poor 
women. 

Along with economically supporting themselves, their 
elders, and their children, adults must maintain and add to the 
elaborate social networks upon which life depends. Offering 
gracious hospitality to guests is a key ingredient of proper adult 
behavior. Adults must also attend to religious matters, carrying 
out rites intended to protect their families and communities. 
In these efforts, men and women constantly work for the bene- 
fit of their kin groups, castes, and other social units. 

Death and Beyond 

The death of an infant or young child — a common event in 
India — causes sorrow but usually not major social disruption. 
The death of a married adult has wider repercussions. Among 
Hindus, the demise of a lineage member immediately ritually 
pollutes the entire lineage for a period of several days. As part 
of the mourning process, closely related male mourners have 
their heads and facial hair shaved, thus publicly declaring their 
close links to the deceased. Various funeral rites, feasts, and 
mourning practices affirm kinship ties with the deceased and 
among survivors. Crucial social bonds become visible to all 
concerned. 

Although a man may grieve for his deceased wife, a widow 
may face not only a personal loss but a major restructuring of 
her life. Becoming a widow in India is not a benign or neutral 
event. A man's death, particularly if it occurs when he is young, 
may be attributed to ill fortune brought upon him by his wife, 
possibly because of her sins in a past life. 

With the death of her husband, a woman's auspicious wife- 
hood ends, and she is plunged into dreaded widowhood. The 
very word widow is used as an epithet. As a widow, a woman is 
devoid of reason to adorn herself. If she follows tradition, she 
may shave her head, shed her jewelry, and wear only plain 
white or dark clothing. 

Widows of low-ranking groups have always been allowed to 
remarry, but widows of high rank have been expected to 
remain unmarried and chaste until death. In earlier times, for 



264 



Street vendor, Jaipur, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Sandra Day O'Connor 

child brides married to older men and widowed young, these 
strictures caused great hardship and inspired reform move- 
ments in some parts of the country. 

In past centuries, the ultimate rejection of widowhood 
occurred in the burning of the Hindu widow on her husband's 
funeral pyre, a practice known as sati (meaning, literally, true 
or virtuous one). Women who so perished in the funeral flames 
were posthumously adulated, and even in the late twentieth 
century are worshiped at memorial tablets and temples erected 
in their honor. In western India, Rajput lineages proudly point 
to satis in their history. Sati was never widespread, and it has 
been illegal since 1829, but a few cases of sati still occur in 
India every year. In choosing to die with her husband, a woman 
evinces great merit and power and is considered able to bring 
boons to her husband's patrilineage and to others who honor 
her. Thus, through her meritorious death, a widow avoids dis- 



265 



India: A Country Study 

dain and achieves glory, not only for herself, but for all of her 
kin as well. 

By restricting widow remarriage, high-status groups limit 
restructuring of the lineage on the death of a male member. 
An unmarried widow remains a member of her husband's lin- 
eage, with no competing ties to other groups of in-laws. Her 
rights to her husband's property, traditionally limited though 
they are to management rather than outright inheritance, 
remain uncomplicated by remarriage to a man from another 
lineage. It is among lower-ranking groups with lesser amounts 
of property and prestige that widow remarriage is most fre- 
quent. 

Most Indians see their present lifetimes as but a prelude to 
an afterlife, the quality of which depends on their behavior in 
this life. Muslims envision heaven and hell, but Hindus concep- 
tualize a series of rebirths ideally culminating in union with the 
divine (see The Monastic Path, ch. 3). Some Hindus believe 
they are destined to marry the same person in each of their 
lifetimes. Thus people feel connected with different permuta- 
tions of themselves and others over cosmic cycles of time. 

Caste and Class 

Varna, Caste, and Other Divisions 

Although many other nations are characterized by social ine- 
quality, perhaps nowhere else in the world has inequality been 
so elaborately constructed as in the Indian institution of caste. 
Caste has long existed in India, but in the modern period it has 
been severely criticized by both Indian and foreign observers. 
Although some educated Indians tell non-Indians that caste 
has been abolished or that "no one pays attention to caste any- 
more," such statements do not reflect reality. 

Caste has undergone significant change since indepen- 
dence, but it still involves hundreds of millions of people. In its 
preamble, India's constitution forbids negative public discrimi- 
nation on the basis of caste. However, caste ranking and caste- 
based interaction have occurred for centuries and will con- 
tinue to do so well into the foreseeable future, more in the 
countryside than in urban settings and more in the realms of 
kinship and marriage than in less personal interactions. 

Castes are ranked, named, endogamous (in-marrying) 
groups, membership in which is achieved by birth. There are 
thousands of castes and subcastes in India, and these large kin- 



266 



Social Systems 



ship-based groups are fundamental to South Asian social struc- 
ture. Each caste is part of a locally based system of interde- 
pendence with other groups, involving occupational specializa- 
tion, and is linked in complex ways with networks that stretch 
across regions and throughout the nation. 

The word caste derives from the Portuguese casta, meaning 
breed, race, or kind. Among the Indian terms that are some- 
times translated as caste are varna (see Glossary), jati (see Glos- 
sary), jat, biradri, and samaj. All of these terms refer to ranked 
groups of various sizes and breadth. Varna, or color, actually 
refers to large divisions that include various castes; the other 
terms include castes and subdivisions of castes sometimes 
called subcastes. 

Many castes are traditionally associated with an occupation, 
such as high-ranking Brahmans; middle-ranking farmer and 
artisan groups, such as potters, barbers, and carpenters; and 
very low-ranking "Untouchable" leatherworkers, butchers, 
launderers, and latrine cleaners. There is some correlation 
between ritual rank on the caste hierarchy and economic pros- 
perity. Members of higher-ranking castes tend, on the whole, to 
be more prosperous than members of lower-ranking castes. 
Many lower-caste people live in conditions of great poverty and 
social disadvantage. 

According to the Rig Veda, sacred texts that date back to oral 
traditions of more than 3,000 years ago, progenitors of the four 
ranked varna groups sprang from various parts of the body of 
the primordial man, which Brahma created from clay (see The 
Vedas and Polytheism, ch. 3). Each group had a function in sus- 
taining the life of society — the social body. Brahmans, or 
priests, were created from the mouth. They were to provide for 
the intellectual and spiritual needs of the community. Kshatri- 
yas, warriors and rulers, were derived from the arms. Their role 
was to rule and to protect others. Vaishyas — landowners and 
merchants — sprang from the thighs, and were entrusted with 
the care of commerce and agriculture. Shudras — artisans and 
servants — came from the feet. Their task was to perform all 
manual labor. 

Later conceptualized was a fifth category, "Untouchable" 
menials, relegated to carrying out very menial and polluting 
work related to bodily decay and dirt. Since 1935 "Untouch- 
ables" have been known as Scheduled Castes, referring to their 
listing on government rosters, or schedules. They are also often 
called by Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi's term 



267 



India: A Country Study 



Harijans, or "Children of God." Although the term Untouchable 
appears in literature produced by these low-ranking castes, in 
the 1990s, many politically conscious members of these groups 
prefer to refer to themselves as Dalit (see Glossary), a Hindi 
word meaning oppressed or downtrodden. According to the 
1991 census, there were 138 million Scheduled Caste members 
in India, approximately 16 percent of the total population. 

The first four varnas apparently existed in the ancient Aryan 
society of northern India. Some historians say that these cate- 
gories were originally somewhat fluid functional groups, not 
castes. A greater degree of fixity gradually developed, resulting 
in the complex ranking systems of medieval India that essen- 
tially continue in the late twentieth century. 

Although a varna is not a caste, when directly asked for their 
caste affiliation, particularly when the questioner is a West- 
erner, many Indians will reply with a varna name. Pressed fur- 
ther, they may respond with a much more specific name of a 
caste, or jati, which falls within that varna. For example, a Brah- 
man may specify that he is a member of a named caste group, 
such as a Jijotiya Brahman, or a Smartha Brahman, and so on. 
Within such castes, people may further belong to smaller sub- 
caste categories and to specific clans and lineages. These finer 
designations are particularly relevant when marriages are 
being arranged and often appear in newspaper matrimonial 
advertisements. 

Members of a caste are typically spread out over a region, 
with representatives living in hundreds of settlements. In any 
small village, there may be representatives of a few or even a 
score or more castes. 

Numerous groups usually called tribes (often referred to as 
Scheduled Tribes) are also integrated into the caste system to 
varying degrees. Some tribes live separately from others — par- 
ticularly in the far northeast and in the forested center of the 
country, where tribes are more like ethnic groups than castes. 
Some tribes are themselves divided into groups similar to sub- 
castes. In regions where members of tribes live in peasant vil- 
lages with nontribal peoples, they are usually considered 
members of separate castes ranking low on the hierarchical 
scale. 

Inequalities among castes are considered by the Hindu faith- 
ful to be part of the divinely ordained natural order and are 
expressed in terms of purity and pollution. Within a village, rel- 
ative rank is most graphically expressed at a wedding or death 



268 



A Potter (Kumhar) caste woman 
painting ceramic pots, Madhya 
Pradesh 



Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 




feast, when all residents of the village are invited. At the home 
of a high-ranking caste member, food is prepared by a member 
of a caste from whom all can accept cooked food (usually by a 
Brahman). Diners are seated in lines; members of a single caste 
sit next to each other in a row, and members of other castes sit 
in perpendicular or parallel rows at some distance. Members of 
Dalit castes, such as Leatherworkers and Sweepers, may be 
seated far from the other diners — even out in an alley. Farther 
away, at the edge of the feeding area, a Sweeper may wait with a 
large basket to receive discarded leavings tossed in by other 
diners. Eating food contaminated by contact with the saliva of 
others not of the same family is considered far too polluting to 
be practiced by members of any other castes. Generally, feasts 
and ceremonies given by Dalits are not attended by higher- 
ranking castes. 

Among Muslims, although status differences prevail, broth- 
erhood may be stressed. A Muslim feast usually includes a cloth 
laid either on clean ground or on a table, with all Muslims, rich 
and poor, dining from plates placed on the same cloth. Mus- 
lims who wish to provide hospitality to observant Hindus, how- 
ever, must make separate arrangements for a high-caste Hindu 
cook and ritually pure foods and dining area. 

Castes that fall within the top four ranked varnas are some- 
times referred to as the "clean castes," with Dalits considered 



269 



Ind ia : A Co u n try St u dy 



"unclean." Castes of the top three ranked varnas are often des- 
ignated "twice-born," in reference to the ritual initiation under- 
gone by male members., in which investiture with the Hindu 
sacred thread constitutes a kind of ritual rebirth. Non-Hindu 
castelike groups generally fall outside these designations. 

Each caste is believed by devout Hindus to have its own 
dharma. or divine lv ordained code of proper conduct. Accord- 
ingly, there is often a histfi decree of tolerance for divergent 
lifestvles among different castes. Brahmans are usuallv 
expected to be nomiolent and spiritual., according with their 
traditional roles as vegetarian teetotaler priests. Kshatrivas are 
supposed to be strong, as fighters and rulers should be. with a 
taste for a2;onression. eating meat, and drinking alcohol. Vaish- 
vas are stereotyped as adept businessmen, in accord with their 
traditional activities in commerce. Shudras are often described 
bv others as tolerably pleasant but expectably somewhat base in 
behavior, whereas Dalits — especially Sweepers — are often 
regarded bv others as followers of vulvar life-stvles. Conversely, 
lower-caste people often view people of high rank as haughty 
and unfeeling. 

The chastitv of women is strongly related to caste status. 
Generally, the higher rankine the caste, the more sexual con- 
trol its women are expected to exhibit. Brahman brides should 
be virginal, faithful to one husband, and celibate in widow- 
hood. Bv contrast, a Sweeper bride mav or mav not be a virgin, 
extramarital affairs mav be tolerated, and, if widowed or 
divorced, the woman is encouraged to remarrv For the higher 
castes, such control of female sexuality helps ensure purity of 
lineage — of crucial importance to maintenance of high status. 
Amons: Muslims, too. high status is stronely correlated with 
female chastitv 

Within castes explicit standards are maintained. Transgres- 
sions mav be dealt with bv a caste council ( panchayat — see Glos- 
sary), meeting periodically to adjudicate issues relevant to the 
caste. Such councils are usually formed of groups of elders, 
almost alwavs males. Punishments such as fines and outcasting, 
either temporary or permanent, can be enforced. In rare cases, 
a person is excommunicated from the caste for gross infrac- 
tions of caste rules. An example of such an infraction might be 
marrying or openlv cohabiting with a mate of a caste lower 
than one's own; such behavior would usually result in the 
higher-caste person dropping to the status of the lower-caste 
person. 



270 



Social Systems 



Activities such as farming or trading can be carried out by 
anyone, but usually only members of the appropriate castes act 
as priests, barbers, potters, weavers, and other skilled artisans, 
whose occupational skills are handed down in families from 
one generation to another. As with other key features of Indian 
social structure, occupational specialization is believed to be in 
accord with the divinely ordained order of the universe. 

The existence of rigid ranking is supernaturally validated 
through the idea of rebirth according to a person's karma, the 
sum of an individual's deeds in this life and in past lives. After 
death, a person's life is judged by divine forces, and rebirth is 
assigned in a high or a low place, depending upon what is 
deserved. This supernatural sanction can never be neglected, 
because it brings a person to his or her position in the caste 
hierarchy, relevant to every transaction involving food or drink, 
speaking, or touching. 

In past decades, Dalits in certain areas (especially in parts of 
the south) had to display extreme deference to high-status peo- 
ple, physically keeping their distance — lest their touch or even 
their shadow pollute others — wearing neither shoes nor any 
upper body covering (even for women) in the presence of the 
upper castes. The lowest-ranking had to jingle a little bell in 
warning of their polluting approach. In much of India, Dalits 
were prohibited from entering temples, using wells from which 
the "clean" castes drew their water, or even attending schools. 
In past centuries, dire punishments were prescribed for Dalits 
who read or even heard sacred texts. 

Such degrading discrimination was made illegal under legis- 
lation passed during British rule and was protested against by 
preindependence reform movements led by Mahatma Gandhi 
and Bhimrao Ramji (B.R.) Ambedkar, a Dalit leader. Dalits agi- 
tated for the right to enter Hindu temples and to use village 
wells and effectively pressed for the enactment of stronger laws 
opposing disabilities imposed on them. After independence, 
Ambedkar almost singlehandedly wrote India's constitution, 
including key provisions barring caste-based discrimination. 
Nonetheless, discriminatory treatment of Dalits remains a fac- 
tor in daily life, especially in villages, as the end of the twentieth 
century approaches. 

In modern times, as in the past, it is virtually impossible for 
an individual to raise his own status by falsely claiming to be a 
member of a higher-ranked caste. Such a ruse might work for a 
time in a place where the person is unknown, but no one 



271 



India: A Country Study 

would dine with or intermarry with such a person or his off- 
spring until the claim was validated through kinship networks. 
Rising on the ritual hierarchy can only be achieved by a caste as 
a group, over a long period of time, principally by adopting 
behavior patterns of higher-ranked groups. This process, 
known as Sanskritization, has been described by M.N. Srinivas 
and others. An example of such behavior is that of some Leath- 
erworker castes adopting a policy of not eating beef, in the 
hope that abstaining from the defiling practice of consuming 
the flesh of sacred bovines would enhance their castes' status. 
Increased economic prosperity for much of a caste greatly aids 
in the process of improving rank. 

Intercaste Relations 

In a village, members of different castes are often linked in 
what has been called the jajmani system, after the word jajman, 
which in some regions means patron. Members of various ser- 
vice castes perform tasks for their patrons, usually members of 
the dominant, that is, most powerful landowning caste of the 
village (commonly castes of the Kshatriya varnd). Households 
of service castes are linked through hereditary bonds to a 
household of patrons, with the lower-caste members providing 
services according to traditional occupational specializations. 
Thus, client families of launderers, barbers, shoemakers, car- 
penters, potters, tailors, and priests provide customary services 
to their patrons, in return for which they receive customary 
seasonal payments of grain, clothing, and money. Ideally, from 
generation to generation, clients owe their patrons political 
allegiance in addition to their labors, while patrons owe their 
clients protection and security. 

The harmonious qualities of the jajmani system have been 
overidealized and variations of the system overlooked by many 
observers. Further, the economic interdependence of the sys- 
tem has weakened since the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is clear that 
members of different castes customarily perform a number of 
functions for one another in rural India that emphasize coop- 
eration rather than competition. This cooperation is revealed 
in economic arrangements, in visits to farmers' threshing floors 
by service caste members to claim traditional payments, and in 
rituals emphasizing interdependence at life crises and calendri- 
cal festivals all over South Asia. For example, in rural Karna- 
taka, in an event described by anthropologist Suzanne 
Hanchett, the annual procession of the village temple cart 



272 



Social Systems 



bearing images of the deities responsible for the welfare of the 
village cannot go forward without the combined efforts of rep- 
resentatives of all castes. It is believed that the sacred cart will 
literally not move unless all work together to move it, some 
pushing and some pulling. 

Some observers feel that the caste system must be viewed as a 
system of exploitation of poor low-ranking groups by more 
prosperous high-ranking groups. In many parts of India, land is 
largely held by dominant castes — high-ranking owners of prop- 
erty — that economically exploit low-ranking landless laborers 
and poor artisans, all the while degrading them with ritual 
emphases on their so-called god-given inferior status. In the 
early 1990s, blatant subjugation of low-caste laborers in the 
northern state of Bihar and in eastern Uttar Pradesh was the 
subject of many news reports. In this region, scores of Dalits 
who have attempted to unite to protest low wages have been 
the victims of lynchings and mass killings by high-caste land- 
owners and their hired assassins. 

In 1991 the news magazine India Today reported that in an 
ostensibly prosperous village about 160 kilometers southeast of 
Delhi, when it became known that a rural Dalit laborer dared 
to have a love affair with the daughter of a high-caste landlord, 
the lovers and their Dalit go-between were tortured, publicly 
hanged, and burnt by agents of the girl's family in the presence 
of some 500 villagers. A similar incident occurred in 1994, 
when a Dalit musician who had secretly married a woman of 
the Kurmi cultivating caste was beaten to death by outraged 
Kurmis, possibly instigated by the young woman's family. The 
terrified bride was stripped and branded as punishment for her 
transgression. Dalit women also have been the victims of gang 
rapes by the police. Many other atrocities, as well as urban riots 
resulting in the deaths of Dalits, have occurred in recent years. 
Such extreme injustices are infrequent enough to be reported 
in outraged articles in the Indian press, while much more com- 
mon daily discrimination and exploitation are considered vir- 
tually routine. 

Changes in the Caste System 

Despite many problems, the caste system has operated suc- 
cessfully for centuries, providing goods and services to India's 
many millions of citizens. The system continues to operate, but 
changes are occurring. India's constitution guarantees basic 
rights to all its citizens, including the right to equality and 



273 



India: A Country Study 



equal protection before the law. The practice of untouchabilitv 
as well as discrimination on the basis of caste, race. sex. or reli- 
gion, has been legally abolished. All citizens have the rieht to 

00. □ 

vote, and political competition is livelv. Voters from everv stra- 
tum of society have formed interest groups., overlapping and 
crosscutting castes, creating an evolving new stvle of integrating 
Indian society 

Castes themselves, however, far from being abolished, have 
certain rights under Indian law. As described bv anthropologist 
Owen M. Lvnch and other scholars, in the expanding political 
arena caste groups are becoming more politicized and forced 
to compete with other interest groups for social and economic 
benefits. In the growing cities, traditional intercaste interde- 
pendencies are negligible. 

Independent India has built on earlier British efforts to rem- 
edy problems suffered bv Dalits bv granting them some bene- 
fits of protective discrimination. Scheduled Castes are entitled 
to reserved electoral offices, reserved jobs in central and state 
governments, and special educational benefits. The constitu- 
tion mandates that one-seventh of state and national legislative 
seats be reserved for members of Scheduled Castes in order to 
guarantee their voice in government. Reserving seats has 
proven useful because few. if any Scheduled Caste candidates 
have ever been elected in nonreserved constituencies. 

Educationally Dalit students have benefited from scholar- 
ships, and Scheduled Caste literacy increased (from 10.3 per- 
cent in 1961 to 21.4 percent in 1981. the last vear for which 
such figures are available), although not as rapidlv as among 
the general population. Improved access to education has 
resulted in the emergence of a substantial group of educated 
Dalits able to take up white-collar occupations and fight for 
their rights. 

There has been tremendous resistance amon^ non-Dalits to 
this protective discrimination for the Scheduled Castes, who 
constitute some 16 percent of the total population, and efforts 
have been made to provide similar advantages to the so-called 
Backward Classes (see Glossary), who constitute an estimated 
52 percent of the population. In August 1990. Prime Minister 
Vishwanath Pratap (V.P. ) Singh announced his intention to 
enforce the recommendations of the Backward Classes Com- 
mission (Mandal Commission — see Glossary), issued in 
December 19S0 and largely ignored for a decade. The report, 
which urged special advantages for obtaining civil service posi- 



274 



Social Systems 



tions and admission to higher education for the Backward 
Classes, resulted in riots and self-immolations and contributed 
to the fall of the prime minister. The upper castes have been 
particularly adamant against these policies because unemploy- 
ment is a major problem in India, and many feel that they are 
being unjustly excluded from posts for which they are better 
qualified than lower-caste applicants. 

As an act of protest, many Dalits have rejected Hinduism 
with its rigid ranking system. Following the example of their 
revered leader, Dr. Ambedkar, who converted to Buddhism 
four years before his death in 1956, millions of Dalits have 
embraced the faith of the Buddha (see Buddhism, ch. 3). Over 
the past few centuries, many Dalits have also converted to 
Christianity and have often by this means raised their socioeco- 
nomic status. However, Christians of Dalit origin still often suf- 
fer from discrimination by Christians — and others — of higher 
caste backgrounds. 

Despite improvements in some aspects of Dalit status, 90 per- 
cent of them live in rural areas in the mid-1990s, where an 
increasing proportion — more than 50 percent — work as land- 
less agricultural laborers. State and national governments have 
attempted to secure more just distribution of land by creating 
land ceilings and abolishing absentee landlordism, but evasive 
tactics by landowners have successfully prevented more than 
minimal redistribution of land to tenant farmers and laborers. 
In contemporary India, field hands face increased competition 
from tractors and harvesting machines. Similarly, artisans are 
being challenged by expanding commercial markets in mass- 
produced factory goods, undercutting traditional mutual obli- 
gations between patrons and clients. The spread of the Green 
Revolution has tended to increase the gap between the pros- 
perous and the poor — most of whom are low-caste (see The 
Green Revolution, ch. 7). 

The growth of urbanization (an estimated 26 percent of the 
population now lives in cities) is having a far-reaching effect on 
caste practices, not only in cities but in villages. Among anony- 
mous crowds in urban public spaces and on public transporta- 
tion, caste affiliations are unknown, and observance of purity 
and pollution rules is negligible. Distinctive caste costumes 
have all but vanished, and low-caste names have been modified, 
although castes remain endogamous, and access to employ- 
ment often occurs through intracaste connections. Restrictions 
on interactions with other castes are becoming more relaxed, 



275 



India: A Country Study 



and, at the same time, observance of other pollution rules is 
declining — especially those concerning birth, death, and men- 
struation. Several growing Hindu sects draw members from 
many castes and regions, and communication between cities 
and villages is expanding dramatically. Kin in town and country 
visit one another frequently, and television programs available 
to huge numbers of villagers vividly portray new lifestyles. As 
new occupations open up in urban areas, the correlation of 
caste with occupation is declining. 

Caste associations have expanded their areas of concern 
beyond traditional elite emulation and local politics into the 
wider political arenas of state and national politics. Finding 
power in numbers within India's democratic system, caste 
groups are pulling together closely allied subcastes in their 
quest for political influence. In efforts to solidify caste bonds, 
some caste associations have organized marriage fairs where 
families can make matches for their children. Traditional hier- 
archical concerns are being minimized in favor of strengthen- 
ing horizontal unity. Thus, while pollution observances are 
declining, caste consciousness is not. 

Education and election to political office have advanced the 
status of many Dalits, but the overall picture remains one of 
great inequity. In recent decades, Dalit anger has been 
expressed in writings, demonstrations, strikes, and the activities 
of such groups as the Dalit Panthers, a radical political party 
demanding revolutionary change. A wider Dalit movement, 
including political parties, educational activities, self-help cen- 
ters, and labor organizations, has spread to many areas of the 
country. 

In a 1982 Dalit publication, Dilip Hiro wrote, "It is one of the 
great modern Indian tragedies and dangers that even well 
meaning Indians still find it so difficult to accept Untouchable 
mobility as being legitimate in fact as well as in theory. ..." Still, 
against all odds, a small intelligentsia has worked for many 
years toward the goal of freeing India of caste consciousness. 

Classes 

In village India, where nearly 74 percent of the population 
resides, caste and class affiliations overlap. According to 
anthropologist Miriam Sharma, "Large landholders who 
employ hired labour are overwhelmingly from the upper 
castes, while the agricultural workers themselves come from 
the ranks of the lowest — predominantly Untouchable — castes." 



276 



A member of a Weaver caste at 
work, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



She also points out that household-labor-using proprietors 
come from the ranks of the middle agricultural castes. Distribu- 
tion of other resources and access to political control follow 
the same pattern of caste-cum-class distinctions. Although this 
congruence is strong, there is a tendency for class formation to 
occur despite the importance of caste, especially in the cities, 
but also in rural areas. 

In an analysis of class formation in India, anthropologist 
Harold A. Gould points out that a three-level system of stratifi- 
cation is taking shape across rural India. He calls the three lev- 
els Forward Classes (higher castes), Backward Classes (middle 
and lower castes), and Harijans (very low castes). Members of 
these groups share common concerns because they stand in 
approximately the same relationship to land and production — 
that is, they are large-scale farmers, small-scale farmers, and 
landless laborers. Some of these groups are drawing together 
within regions across caste lines in order to work for political 
power and access to desirable resources. For example, since the 
late 1960s, some of the middle-ranking cultivating castes of 
northern India have increasingly cooperated in the political 
arena in order to advance their common agrarian and market- 
oriented interests. Their efforts have been spurred by competi- 
tion with higher-caste landed elites. 



277 



India: A Country Study 



In cities other groups have vested interests that crosscut 
caste boundaries, suggesting the possibility of forming classes 
in the future. These groups include prosperous industrialists 
and entrepreneurs, who have made successful efforts to push 
the central government toward a probusiness stance; bureau- 
crats, who depend upon higher education rather than land to 
preserve their positions as civil servants; political officeholders, 
who enjoy good salaries and perquisites of all kinds; and the 
military, who constitute one of the most powerful armed forces 
in the developing world (see Organization and Equipment of 
the Armed Forces, ch. 10). 

Economically far below such groups are members of the 
menial underclass, which is taking shape in both villages and 
urban areas. As the privileged elites move ahead, low-ranking 
menial workers remain economically insecure. Were they to 
join together to mobilize politically across lines of class and 
religion in recognition of their common interests, Gould 
observes, they might find power in their sheer numbers. 

India's rapidly expanding economy has provided the basis 
for a fundamental change — the emergence of what eminent 
journalist Suman Dubey calls a "new vanguard" increasingly 
dictating India's political and economic direction. This group 
is India's new middle class — mobile, driven, consumer-ori- 
ented, and, to some extent, forward-looking. Hard to define 
precisely, it is not a single stratum of society, but straddles town 
and countryside, making its voice heard everywhere. It encom- 
passes prosperous farmers, white-collar workers, business peo- 
ple, military personnel, and myriad others, all actively working 
toward a prosperous life. Ownership of cars, televisions, and 
other consumer goods, reasonable earnings, substantial sav- 
ings, and educated children (often fluent in English) typify this 
diverse group. Many have ties to kinsmen living abroad who 
have done very well. 

The new middle class is booming, at least partially in 
response to a doubling of the salaries of some 4 million central 
government employees in 1986, followed by similar increases 
for state and district officers. Unprecedented liberalization and 
opening up of the economy in the 1980s and 1990s have been 
part of the picture (see Growth since 1980, ch. 6). 

There is no single set of criteria defining the middle class, 
and estimates of its numbers vary widely. The mid-range of fig- 
ures presented in a 1992 survey article by analyst Suman Dubey 
is approximately 150 to 175 million — some 20 percent of the 



278 



Social Systems 



population — although other observers suggest alternative fig- 
ures. The middle class appears to be increasing rapidly. Once 
primarily urban and largely Hindu, the phenomenon of the 
consuming middle class is burgeoning among Muslims and 
prosperous villagers as well. According to V.A. Pai Panandikar, 
director of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, cited by 
Dubey, by the end of the twentieth century 30 percent — some 
300 million — of India's population will be middle class. 

The middle class is bracketed on either side by the upper 
and lower echelons. Members of the upper class — around 1 
percent of the population — are owners of large properties, 
members of exclusive clubs, and vacationers in foreign lands, 
and include industrialists, former maharajas, and top execu- 
tives. Below the middle class is perhaps a third of the popula- 
tion — ordinary farmers, tradespeople, artisans, and workers. At 
the bottom of the economic scale are the poor — estimated at 
320 million, some 45 percent of the population in 1988 — who 
live in inadequate homes without adequate food, work for pit- 
tances, have undereducated and often sickly children, and are 
the victims of numerous social inequities. 

The Fringes of Society 

India's complex society includes some unique members — 
sadhus (holy men) and hijras (transvestite-eunuchs). Such peo- 
ple have voluntarily stepped outside the usual bonds of kinship 
and caste to join with others in castelike groups based upon 
personal — yet culturally shaped — inclinations. 

In India of the 1990s, several hundred thousand Hindu and 
Jain sadhus and a few thousand holy women (sadhvis) live an 
ascetic life. They have chosen to wear ocher robes, or perhaps 
no clothing at all, to daub their skin with holy ash, to pray and 
meditate, and to wander from place to place, depending on the 
charity of others. Most have given up affiliation with.their caste 
and kin and have undergone a funeral ceremony for them- 
selves, followed by a ritual rebirth into their new ascetic life. 
They come from all walks of life, and range from illiterate vil- 
lagers to well-educated professionals. In their new lives as 
renunciants, they are devoted to spiritual concerns, yet each is 
affiliated with an ascetic order or subsect demanding strict 
adherence to rules of dress, itinerancy, diet, worship, and ritual 
pollution. Within each order, hierarchical concerns are exhib- 
ited in the subservience novitiates display to revered gurus (see 
The Tradition of the Enlightened Master, ch. 3). Further, at pil- 



279 



India: A Country Study 

grimage sites, different orders take precedence in accordance 
with an accepted hierarchy. Thus, although sadhus have fore- 
sworn many of the trappings of ordinary life, they have not 
given up the hierarchy and interdependence so pervasive in 
Indian society. 

The most extreme sadhus, the aghoris, turn normal rules of 
conduct completely upside down. Rajesh and Ramesh Bedi, 
who have studied sadhus for decades, estimate that there may 
be fewer than fifteen aghoris in contemporary India. In the 
quest for great spiritual attainment, the aghori lives alone, like 
Lord Shiva, at cremation grounds, supping from a human skull 
bowl. He eats food provided only by low-ranking Sweepers and 
prostitutes, and in moments of religious fervor devours his own 
bodily wastes and pieces of human flesh torn from burning 
corpses. In violating the most basic taboos of the ordinary 
Hindu householder, the aghori sadhu graphically reminds him- 
self and others of the correct rules of social behavior. 

Hijras are males who have become "neither man nor 
woman," transsexual transvestites who are usually castrated and 
are attributed with certain ritual powers of blessing. As 
described by anthropologist Serena Nanda, they are distinct 
from ordinary male homosexuals (known as zenana, woman, or 
anmarad, un-man), who retain their identity as males and con- 
tinue to live in ordinary society. Most hijras derive from a mid- 
dle- or lower-status Hindu or Muslim background and have 
experienced male impotency or effeminacy. A few originally 
had ambiguous or hermaphroditic sexual organs. An estimated 
50,000 hijras live throughout India, predominantly in cities of 
the north. They are united in the worship of the Hindu god- 
dess Bahuchara Mata. 

Hijras voluntarily leave their families of birth, renounce male 
sexuality, and assume a female identity, name, and dress. A hijra 
undergoes a surgical emasculation in which he is transformed 
from an impotent male into a potentially powerful new person. 
Like Shiva — attributed with breaking off his phallus and throw- 
ing it to earth, thereby extending his sexual power to the uni- 
verse (recognized in Hindu worship of the lingam) — the 
emasculated hijra has the power to bless others with fertility 
(see Shiva, ch. 3). Groups of hijras go about together, dancing 
and singing at the homes of new baby boys, blessing them with 
virility and the ability to continue the family line. Hijras are also 
attributed with the power to bring rain in times of drought. 
Hijras receive alms and respect for their powers, yet they are 



280 



Social Systems 



also ridiculed and abused because of their unusual sexual con- 
dition and because some act as male prostitutes. 

The hijra community functions much like a caste. They have 
communal households; newly formed Active kinship bonds, 
marriage-like arrangements; and seven nationwide "houses," or 
symbolic descent groups, with regional and national leaders, 
and a council. There is a hierarchy of gurus and disciples, with 
expulsion from the community a possible punishment for fail- 
ure to obey group rules. Thus, although living on the margins 
of society, hijras are empowered by their special relationship 
with their goddess and each other and occupy an accepted and 
meaningful place in India's social world. 

The Village Community 

Settlement and Structure 

Scattered throughout India are approximately 500,000 vil- 
lages. The Census of India regards most settlements of fewer 
than 5,000 as a village. These settlements range from tiny ham- 
lets of thatched huts to larger settlements of tile-roofed stone 
and brick houses (see Structure and Dynamics, ch. 2). Most vil- 
lages are small; nearly 80 percent have fewer than 1,000 inhab- 
itants, according to the 1991 census. Most are nucleated 
settlements, while others are more dispersed. It is in villages 
that India's most basic business — agriculture — takes place. 
Here, in the face of vicissitudes of all kinds, farmers follow 
time-tested as well as innovative methods of growing wheat, 
rice, lentils, vegetables, fruits, and many other crops in order to 
accomplish the challenging task of feeding themselves and the 
nation. Here, too, flourish many of India's most valued cultural 
forms. 

Viewed from a distance, an Indian village may appear decep- 
tively simple. A cluster of mud-plastered walls shaded by a few 
trees, set among a stretch of green or dun-colored fields, with a 
few people slowly coming or going, oxcarts creaking, cattle low- 
ing, and birds singing — all present an image of harmonious 
simplicity. Indian city dwellers often refer nostalgically to "sim- 
ple village life." City artists portray colorfully garbed village 
women gracefully carrying water pots on their heads, and writ- 
ers describe isolated rural settlements unsullied by the com- 
plexities of modern urban civilization. Social scientists of the 
past wrote of Indian villages as virtually self-sufficient commu- 
nities with few ties to the outside world. 



281 



India: A Country Study 

In actuality, Indian village life is far from simple. Each village 
is connected through a variety of crucial horizontal linkages 
with other villages and with urban areas both near and far. 
Most villages are characterized by a multiplicity of economic, 
caste, kinship, occupational, and even religious groups linked 
vertically within each settlement. Factionalism is a typical fea- 
ture of village politics. In one of the first of the modern anthro- 
pological studies of Indian village life, anthropologist Oscar 
Lewis called this complexity "rural cosmopolitanism." 

Throughout most of India, village dwellings are built very 
close to one another in a nucleated settlement, with small lanes 
for passage of people and sometimes carts. Village fields sur- 
round the settlement and are generally within easy walking dis- 
tance. In hilly tracts of central, eastern, and far northern India, 
dwellings are more spread out, reflecting the nature of the 
topography. In the wet states of West Bengal and Kerala, houses 
are more dispersed; in some parts of Kerala, they are con- 
structed in continuous lines, with divisions between villages not 
obvious to visitors. 

In northern and central India, neighborhood boundaries 
can be vague. The houses of Dalits are generally located in sep- 
arate neighborhoods or on the outskirts of the nucleated settle- 
ment, but there are seldom distinct Dalit hamlets. By contrast, 
in the south, where socioeconomic contrasts and caste pollu- 
tion observances tend to be stronger than in the north, Brah- 
man homes may be set apart from those of non-Brahmans, and 
Dalit hamlets are set at a little distance from the homes of 
other castes. 

The number of castes resident in a single village can vary 
widely, from one to more than forty. Typically, a village is domi- 
nated by one or a very few castes that essentially control the vil- 
lage land and on whose patronage members of weaker groups 
must rely. In the village of about 1,100 population near Delhi 
studied by Lewis in the 1950s, the Jat caste (the largest cultivat- 
ing caste in northwestern India) comprised 60 percent of the 
residents and owned all of the village land, including the house 
sites. In Nimkhera, Madhya Pradesh, Hindu Thakurs and Brah- 
mans, and Muslim Pathans own substantial land, while lower- 
ranking Weaver (Koli) and Barber (Khawas) caste members 
and others own smaller farms. In many areas of the south, 
Brahmans are major landowners, along with some other rela- 
tively high-ranking castes. Generally, land, prosperity, and 
power go together. 



282 



Social Systems 



In some regions, landowners refrain from using plows them- 
selves but hire tenant farmers and laborers to do this work. In 
other regions, landowners till the soil with the aid of laborers, 
usually resident in the same village. Fellow villagers typically 
include representatives of various service and artisan castes to 
supply the needs of the villagers — priests, carpenters, black- 
smiths, barbers, weavers, potters, oilpressers, leatherworkers, 
sweepers, waterbearers, toddy-tappers, and so on. Artisanry in 
pottery, wood, cloth, metal, and leather, although diminishing, 
continues in many contemporary Indian villages as it did in 
centuries past. Village religious observances and weddings are 
occasions for members of various castes to provide customary 
ritual goods and services in order for the events to proceed 
according to proper tradition. 

Aside from caste-associated occupations, villages often 
include people who practice nontraditional occupations. For 
example, Brahmans or Thakurs may be shopkeepers, teachers, 
truckers, or clerks, in addition to their caste-associated occupa- 
tions of priest and farmer. In villages near urban areas, an 
increasing number of people commute to the cities to take up 
jobs, and many migrate. Some migrants leave their families in 
the village and go to the cities to work for months at a time. 
Many people from Kerala, as well as other regions, have tempo- 
rarily migrated to the Persian Gulf states for employment and 
send remittances back to their village families, to which they 
will eventually return. 

At slack seasons, village life can appear to be sleepy, but usu- 
ally villages are humming with activity. The work ethic is strong, 
with little time out for relaxation, except for numerous divinely 
sanctioned festivals and rite-of-passage celebrations. Residents 
are quick to judge each other, and improper work or social 
habits receive strong criticism. Villagers feel a sense of village 
pride and honor, and the reputation of a village depends upon 
the behavior of all of its residents. 

Village Unity and Divisiveness 

Villagers manifest a deep loyalty to their village, identifying 
themselves to strangers as residents of a particular village, hark- 
ing back to family residence in the village that typically extends 
into the distant past. A family rooted in a particular village does 
not easily move to another, and even people who have lived in a 
city for a generation or two refer to their ancestral village as 
"our village." 



283 



India: A Country Study 

Villagers share use of common village facilities — the village 
pond (known in India as a tank), grazing grounds, temples and 
shrines, cremation grounds, schools, sitting spaces under large 
shade trees, wells, and wastelands. Perhaps equally important, 
fellow villagers share knowledge of their common origin in a 
locale and of each other's secrets, often going back genera- 
tions. Interdependence in rural life provides a sense of unity 
among residents of a village. 

A great many observances emphasize village unity. Typically, 
each village recognizes a deity deemed the village protector or 
protectress, and villagers unite in regular worship of this deity, 
considered essential to village prosperity. They may cooperate 
in constructing temples and shrines important to the village as 
a whole. Hindu festivals such as Holi, Dipavali (Diwali), and 
Durga Puja bring villagers together (see Public Worship, ch.3). 
In the north, even Muslims may join in the friendly splashing 
of colored water on fellow villagers in Spring Holi revelries, 
which involve villagewide singing, dancing, and joking. People 
of all castes within a village address each other by kinship 
terms, reflecting the fictive kinship relationships recognized 
within each settlement. In the north, where village exogamy is 
important, the concept of a village as a significant unit is clear. 
When the all-male groom's party arrives from another village, 
residents of the bride's village in North India treat the visitors 
with the appropriate behavior due to them as bride-takers — 
men greet them with ostentatious respect, while women cover 
their faces and sing bawdy songs at them. A woman born in a 
village is known as a daughter of the village while an in-married 
bride is considered a daughter-in-law of the village. In her con- 
jugal home in North India, a bride is often known by the name 
of her natal village; for example, Sanchiwali (woman from San- 
chi). A man who chooses to live in his wife's natal village — usu- 
ally for reasons of land inheritance — is known by the name of 
his birth village, such as Sankheriwala (man from Sankheri). 

Traditionally, villages often recognized a headman and lis- 
tened with respect to the decisions of the panchayat, composed 
of important men from the village's major castes, who had the 
power to levy fines and exclude transgressors from village social 
life. Disputes were decided within the village precincts as much 
as possible, with infrequent recourse to the police or court sys- 
tem. In present-day India, the government supports an elective 
panchayat and headman system, which is distinct from the tradi- 
tional council and headman, and, in many instances, even 



284 



Social Systems 



includes women and very low-caste members. As older systems 
of authority are challenged, villagers are less reluctant to take 
disputes to court. 

The solidarity of a village is always riven by conflicts, rivalries, 
and factionalism. Living together in intensely close relation- 
ships over generations, struggling to wrest a livelihood from 
the same limited area of land and water sources, closely watch- 
ing some grow fat and powerful while others remain weak and 
dependent, fellow villagers are prone to disputes, strategic con- 
tests, and even violence. Most villages include what villagers call 
"big fish," prosperous, powerful people, fed and serviced 
through the labors of the struggling "little fish." Villagers com- 
monly view gains as possible only at the expense of neighbors. 
Further, the increased involvement of villagers with the wider 
economic and political world outside the village via travel, 
work, education, and television; expanding government influ- 
ence in rural areas; and increased pressure on land and 
resources as village populations grow seem to have resulted in 
increased factionalism and competitiveness in many parts of 
rural India. 

Urban Life 

The Growth of Cities 

Accelerating urbanization is powerfully affecting the trans- 
formation of Indian society. Slightly more than 26 percent of 
the country's population is urban, and in 1991 more than half 
of urban dwellers lived in 299 urban agglomerates or cities of 
more than 100,000 people. By 1991 India had twenty-four cities 
with populations of at least 1 million. By that year, among cities 
of the world, Bombay (or Mumbai, in Marathi), in Maharash- 
tra, ranked seventh in the world at 12.6 million, and Calcutta, 
in West Bengal, ranked eighth at almost 11 million. In the 
1990s, India's larger cities have been growing at twice the rate 
of smaller towns and villages. Between the 1960s and 1991, the 
population of the Union Territory of Delhi quadrupled, to 8.4 
million, and Madras, in Tamil Nadu, grew to 5.4 million. Ban- 
galore, in Karnataka; Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh; and 
many other cities are expanding rapidly. About half of these 
increases are the result of rural-urban migration, as villagers 
seek better lives for themselves in the cities. 

Most Indian cities are very densely populated. New Delhi, 
for example, had 6,352 people per square kilometer in 1991. 



285 



India: A Country Study 

Congestion, noise, traffic jams, air pollution, and major short- 
ages of key necessities characterize urban life. Every major city 
of India faces the same proliferating problems of grossly inade- 
quate housing, transportation, sewerage, electric power, water 
supplies, schools, and hospitals. Slums and jumbles of pave- 
ment dwellers' lean-tos constantly multiply. An increasing num- 
ber of trucks, buses, cars, three-wheel autorickshaws, motorcy- 
cles, and motorscooters, all spewing uncontrolled fumes, surge 
in sometimes haphazard patterns over city streets jammed with 
jaywalking pedestrians, cattle, and goats. Accident rates are 
high (India's fatality rate from road accidents, the most com- 
mon cause of accidental death, is said to be twenty times higher 
than United States rates), and it is a daily occurrence for a city 
dweller to witness a crash or the running down of a pedestrian. 
In 1984 the citizens of Bhopal suffered the nightmare of India's 
largest industrial accident, when poisonous gas leaking from a 
Union Carbide plant killed and injured thousands of city dwell- 
ers. Less spectacularly, on a daily basis, uncontrolled pollutants 
from factories all over India damage the urban environments 
in which millions live. 

Urban Inequities 

Major socioeconomic differences are much on display in cit- 
ies. The fine homes — often a walled compound with a garden, 
servants' quarters, and garage — and gleaming automobiles of 
the super wealthy stand in stark contrast to the burlap-covered 
huts of the barefoot poor. Shops filled with elegant silk saris 
and air-conditioned restaurants cater to the privileged, while 
ragged dust-covered children with outstretched hands wait out- 
side in hopes of receiving a few coins. The wealthy and the mid- 
dle class employ servants and workers of various kinds, but 
jajmani-like ties are essentially lacking, and the rich and the 
poor live much more separate lives than in villages. At the same 
time, casual interaction and physical contact among people of 
all castes is constant, on public streets and in buses, trains, and 
movie theaters. 

As would-be urbanites stream into the cities, they often seek 
out people from their village, caste, or region who have gone 
before them and receive enough hospitality to tide them over 
until they can settle in themselves. They find accommodation 
wherever they can, even if only on a quiet corner of a sidewalk, 
or inside a concrete sewer pipe waiting to be laid. Some are for- 
tunate enough to find shelter in decrepit tenements or in open 



286 



A busy street in Jaipur, Raj as than 
Courtesy Sandra Day O'Connor 



areas where they can throw up flimsy structures of mud, tin 
sheeting, or burlap. In such slum settlements, a single out- 
house may be shared by literally thousands of people, or, more 
usually, there are no sanitary facilities at all. Ditches are awash 
in raw sewage, and byways are strewn with the refuse of people 
and animals with nowhere else to go. 

Despite the exterior appearance of chaos, slum life is highly 
structured, with many economic, religious, caste, and political 
interests expressed in daily activity. Living conditions are 
extremely difficult, and slum dwellers fear the constant threat 
of having their homes bulldozed in municipal "slum clearance" 
efforts; nonetheless, slum life is animated by a strong sense of 
joie de vivre. 

In many sections of Indian cities, scavenging pigs, often 
owned by Sweepers, along with stray dogs, help to recycle fecal 



287 



India: A Country Study 



material. Piles of less noxious vegetal and paper garbage are 
sorted through by the poorest people, who seek usable or sal- 
able bits of things. Cattle and goats, owned by entrepreneurial 
folk, graze on these piles, turning otherwise useless garbage 
into valuable milk, dung (used for cooking fuel), and meat. 
These domestic animals roam even in neighborhoods of fine 
homes, outside the compound walls that protect the privileged 
and their gardener-tended rose bushes from needy animals 
and people. 

Finding employment in the urban setting can be extremely 
challenging, and, whenever possible, networks of relatives and 
friends are used to help seek jobs. Millions of Indians are 
unemployed or underemployed. Ingenuity and tenacity are the 
hallmarks of urban workers, who carry out a remarkable multi- 
tude of tasks and sell an incredible variety of foods, trinkets, 
and services, all under difficult conditions. Many of the urban 
poor are migrant laborers carrying headloads of bricks and 
earth up rickety bamboo scaffolding at construction sites, while 
their small children play about at the edge of excavations or 
huddle on mounds of gravel in the blazing sun. Nursing moth- 
ers must take time out periodically to suckle their babies at the 
edge of construction sites: such "recesses" are considered rea- 
son to pay a woman less for a day's work than a man earns 
(male construction workers earned about USS1 a day in 1994). 
Moreover, women are seen as physically weaker by some 
employers and thus not deserving of equal wages with men. 

These construction projects are financed by governments 
and by business enterprises, which are run by cadres of well- 
educated, healthy, well-dressed men and, increasingly, women, 
who occupy positions of power and make decisions affecting 
many people. India's major cities have long been headquarters 
for the country's highest socioeconomic groups, people with 
transnational and international connections whose choices are 
taking India into new realms of economic development and 
social change. Among these well-placed people, intercaste mar- 
riages raise few eyebrows, as long as marital unions link people 
of similar upper- or upper-middle-class backgrounds. Such 
marriages, sometimes even across religious lines, help knit 
India's most powerful people together. 

Increasingly conspicuous in India's cities are the growing 
ranks of the middle class. In carefully laundered clothes, they 
emerge from modest and semiprosperous homes to ride buses 
and motorscooters to their jobs in offices, hospitals, courts, and 



288 



An urban street scene in Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



commercial establishments. Their well-tended children are 
educated in properly organized schools. Family groups go out 
together to places of worship, social events, snack shops, and to 
bazaars bustling with consumers eager to buy the necessities of 
a comfortable life. Members of the middle class cluster around 
small stock-market outlets in cities all over the country. Even in 
Calcutta, notorious for slums and street dwellers, the dominant 
image is of office workers in pressed white garments riding 
crowded buses — or Calcutta's world-class subway line — to their 
jobs as office workers and professionals (see Transportation, 
ch. 6). 

For nearly everyone within the highly challenging urban 
environment, ties to family and kin remain crucial to prosper- 
ity. Even in the harshest urban conditions, families show 
remarkable resilience. Neighborhoods, too, take on impor- 



289 



India: A Country Stud\ 

tance. and neighbors from various backgrounds develop coop- 
erative ties with one another. Neighborhood solidarity is 
expressed at such annual Hindu festivals as Ganesh's Birthdav 
(Ganesh Chaturthi) in Bombay and Durga Puja in Calcutta, 
when neighborhood associations create elaborate images of 
the deities and take them out in grand processions. 

Cities as Centers 

Cosmopolitan cities are the great hubs of commerce and 
government upon which the nation's functioning depends. 
Bombay. India's largest citv and port., is India's economic pow- 
erhouse and locus of the nation's atomic research. The 
National Capital Territory of Delhi, where a series of seven cit- 
ies was built over centuries, is the site of the capital — New 
Delhi — and political nerve center of the world's largest democ- 
racy. Calcutta and Madras fill major roles in the country's eco- 
nomic life, as do high-tech Bangalore and Ahmadabad (in 
Gujarat ) , famous for textiles. Great markets in foods., manufac- 
tured goods, and a host of kev commodities are centered in 
urban trading and distribution points. Most eminent institu- 
tions of higher learning, cradles of intellectual development 
and scientific investigation., are situated in cities. The visual 
arts, music, classical dancing, poetrv. and literature all flourish 
in the urban setting. Critical political and social commentary 
appears in urban newspapers and periodicals. Creative new 
trends in architecture and design are conceptualized and 
brought to reality in cities. 

Cities are the source of television broadcasts and those great 
favorites of the Indian public, movies. Bombay, sometimes 
called "Bollvwood." and Madras are major centers of film pro- 
duction, bringing depictions of urban lifestyles before the eves 
of small-town dwellers and villagers all over the nation. With 
the continuing national proliferation of television sets, video- 
cassette recorders, and movie videocassettes. the influence of 
such productions should not be underestimated. 

Social revolutions, too, receive the support of urban visionar- 
ies. Among the more important social developments in con- 
temporary India is the growing women's movement, largely led 
bv educated urban women. Seeking to restructure society and 
gender relations, activists, scholars, and workers in the 
women's movement have come together in numerous loosely 
allied and highly diverse organizations focusing on issues of 
rights and equality, empowerment, and justice for women. 



290 



Bombay's skyline 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



Some of these groups exist in rural areas, but most are city 
based. 

The escalating issues of dowry-related murder and suicide 
are most pressing in New Delhi, where groups such as Saheli 
(Woman Friend) provide essential support to troubled women. 
The pathbreaking feminist publication Manushi is published in 
New Delhi and distributed throughout the country. The over- 
whelming economic needs of self-employed poor female work- 
ers in Ahmadabad inspired Ela Bhatt and her coworkers in the 
Self-Employed Women's Association, which has been highly 
successful in helping poor women improve their own lives. 

Urban women have initiated protests challenging female 
feticide, child marriage, child prostitution, domestic violence, 
polygyny, sati, sexual harassment, police rape of female plain- 
tiffs, and other gender-related injustices. Their efforts have 
brought new ways of thinking out of elite, educated circles into 
the broader public arena of India's multilevel society. 

In 1994, two attractive urban Indian women won the most 
prominent international beauty contests, the Miss Universe 
and the Miss World competitions. Thousands of young Indian 
women idolized the glamorous beauties and many newspapers 
gushed about the victories, but women's groups and feminist 
commentators decried this adulation. They pointed out that 
the deprivations and injustices experienced by a high propor- 
tion of Indian women were being given short shrift. While the 
beauty contest winners were being paraded about in crowns 
and white chariots before admiring throngs, almost ignored by 
the public and the media were the torture-slaying of a village 



291 



India: A Country Study 



woman accused of theft bv a soothsayer and the historic qualifi- 
cation of six women as the Indian air force's first female pilots 
(see The Air Force, ch. 10). In 1995. the All India Democratic 
Women's Association and other groups protested in New Delhi 
against the Miss India contest. 

Future Trends 

Bv the twenty-first century, India's population will be more 
than 1 billion. Approximately one-third of this enormous pop- 
ulation will live in urban areas, which means adding the popu- 
lation of another Calcutta.. Bombay, or Madras to India's 
already overburdened cities each vear into the foreseeable 
future. In rural areas, pressures on land and other resources 
will continue to intensify. 

In India's democracy ideas are often vociferously expressed, 
and members of different groups are increasingly demanding 
what thev consider a fair share of resources and benefits. Toler- 
ance for inequity is diminishing among the less privileged, 
even as inequitv is increasing in both rural and urban areas. As 
competition for scarce resources and benefits grows,, some 
political leaders have been encouraging the populace to blame 
these problems on religious differences. 

Prosperity is available to many and access to education and 
an expanding range of consumer goods is possible for an ever- 
increasing number of people. At the same time, the sheer num- 
bers of the poor and less privileged are increasing as thev are 
left behind, inadequately educated, and forced bv circum- 
stance to labor under insecure conditions. Class and gender 
justice, widelv sought bv a significant number of people, 
remains an elusive goal. 

India is part of a much wider community of nations facing 
these and other problems, so it will not be alone in seeking 
solutions. In this endeavor, the great structural principles of 
hierarchy and interdependence that have held Indian society 
together over the millennia will be brought to the fore. Creat- 
ing manageable order from complexity, bringing together 
widely disparate groups in structured efforts to benefit the 
wider society, encouraging harmony among people with diver- 
gent interests., knowing that close family and friends can rely 
on each other in times of stress, allocating different tasks to 
those with different skills, and striving to do what is morallv 
right in the eves of the divine and the human community — 



292 



Social Systems 



these are some of the great strengths upon which Indian soci- 
ety can rely as it meets the challenges of the future. 

* * * 

The English-language literature on Indian society is enor- 
mous. Many of the most highly regarded works have been pub- 
lished in both India and the United States. Among these are 
David G. Mandelbaum's two-volume Society in India, a classic 
synthesis of sociological and anthropological research; histo- 
rian Stanley Wolpert's India, a highly readable introduction to 
many aspects of Indian culture and history; Owen M. Lynch's 
The Politics of Untouchability; Sudhir Kakar's The Inner World; 
M.N. Srinivas's Social Change in Modern India; Pauline M. 
Kolenda's Caste in Contemporary India; Miriam Sharma's The Pol- 
itics of Inequality; and V.S. Naipaul's India: A Million Mutinies 
Now. 

Works published in the United States, which may also be 
available in India, include Maureen L.P. Patterson's compre- 
hensive South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographic Synthesis, an 
essential reference; Clarence Maloney's Peoples of South Asia, an 
extremely useful overview; Robert W. Stern's Changing India, an 
introduction to India's modern history and social institutions; 
and Myron Weiner's The Child and the State in India, a thought- 
provoking examination of children's place in Indian social 
structure. To stay abreast of current events, it is worthwhile to 
read the fortnightly news magazine India Today, published in 
both Indian and American editions. (For further information 
and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



293 



Chapter 6. Character and Structure of the 

Economy 



A traditional-style printer using a wood block to print designs on fabric 



INDIA'S ECONOMY HAS MADE great strides in the years 
since independence. In 1947 the country was poor and shat- 
tered by the violence and economic and physical disruption 
involved in the partition from Pakistan. The economy had stag- 
nated since the late nineteenth century and industrial devel- 
opment had been restrained to preserve the area as a market 
for British manufacturers. In fiscal year (FY — see Glossary) 
1950, agriculture, forestry, and fishing accounted for 58.9 per- 
cent of the gross domestic product (GDP — see Glossary) and 
for a much larger proportion of employment. Manufacturing, 
which was dominated by the jute and cotton textile industries, 
accounted for only 10.3 percent of GDP at that time. 

India's new leaders sought to use the power of the state to 
direct economic growth and reduce widespread poverty. The 
public sector came to dominate heavy industry, transportation, 
and telecommunications. The private sector produced most 
consumer goods but was controlled directly by a variety of gov- 
ernment regulations and financial institutions that provided 
major financing for large private-sector projects. Government 
emphasized self-sufficiency rather than foreign trade and 
imposed strict controls on imports and exports. In the 1950s, 
there was steady economic growth, but results in the 1960s and 
1970s were less encouraging. 

Beginning in the late 1970s, successive Indian governments 
sought to reduce state control of the economy. Progress toward 
that goal was slow but steady, and many analysts attributed the 
stronger growth of the 1980s to those efforts. In the late 1980s, 
however, India relied on foreign borrowing to finance develop- 
ment plans to a greater extent than before. As a result, when 
the price of oil rose sharply in August 1990, the nation faced a 
balance of payments crisis. The need for emergency loans led 
the government to make a greater commitment to economic 
liberalization than it had up to this time. In the early 1990s, 
India's postindependence development pattern of strong cen- 
tralized planning, regulation and control of private enterprise, 
state ownership of many large units of production, trade pro- 
tectionism, and strict limits on foreign capital was increasingly 
questioned not only by policy makers but also by most of the 
intelligentsia. 



297 



India: A Country Study 

As India moved into the mid-1990s, the economic outlook 
was mixed. Most analysts believed that economic liberalization 
would continue, although there was disagreement about the 
speed and scale of the measures that would be implemented. It 
seemed likely that India would come close to or equal the rela- 
tively impressive rate of economic growth attained in the 1980s, 
but that the poorest sections of the population might not bene- 
fit. 

Structure of the Economy 

Independence to 1979 

At independence the economy was predominantly agrarian. 
Most of the population was employed in agriculture, and most 
of those people were very poor, existing by cropping their own 
small plots or supplying labor to other farms. Landownership, 
land rental, and sharecropping rights were complex, involving 
layers of intermediaries (see Land Use, ch. 7). Moreover, the 
structural economic problems inherited at independence were 
exacerbated by the costs associated with the partition of British 
India, which had resulted in about 12 million to 14 million ref- 
ugees fleeing past each other across the new borders between 
India and Pakistan (see National Integration, ch. 1). The settle- 
ment of refugees was a considerable financial strain. Partition 
also divided complementary economic zones. Under the Brit- 
ish, jute and cotton were grown in the eastern part of Bengal, 
the area that became East Pakistan (after 1971, Bangladesh), 
but processing took place mostly in the western part of Bengal, 
which became the Indian state of West Bengal in 1947. As a 
result, after independence India had to employ land previously 
used for food production to cultivate cotton and jute for its 
mills. 

India's leaders — especially the first prime minister, Jawahar- 
lal Nehru, who introduced the five-year plans — agreed that 
strong economic growth and measures to increase incomes 
and consumption among the poorest groups were necessary 
goals for the new nation. Government was assigned an impor- 
tant role in this process, and since 1951 a series of plans have 
guided the country's economic development. Although there 
was considerable growth in the 1950s, the long-term rates of 
growth were less positive than India's politicians desired and 
less than those of many other Asian countries. From FY 1951 to 
FY 1979, the economy grew at an average rate of about 3.1 per- 



298 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

cent a year in constant prices, or at an annual rate of 1.0 per- 
cent per capita (see table 16, Appendix). During this period, 
industry grew at an average rate of 4.5 percent a year, com- 
pared with an annual average of 3.0 percent for agriculture. 
Many factors contributed to the slowdown of the economy after 
the mid-1960s, but economists differ over the relative impor- 
tance of those factors. Structural deficiencies, such as the need 
for institutional changes in agriculture and the inefficiency of 
much of the industrial sector, also contributed to economic 
stagnation. Wars with China in 1962 and with Pakistan in 1965 
and 1971; a flood of refugees from East Pakistan in 1971; 
droughts in 1965, 1966, 1971, and 1972; currency devaluation 
in 1966; and the first world oil crisis, in 1973-74, all jolted the 
economy. 

Growth since 1980 

The rate of growth improved in the 1980s. From FY 1980 to 
FY 1989, the economy grew at an annual rate of 5.5 percent, or 
3.3 percent on a per capita basis. Industry grew at an annual 
rate of 6.6 percent and agriculture at a rate of 3.6 percent. A 
high rate of investment was a major factor in improved eco- 
nomic growth. Investment went from about 19 percent of GDP 
in the early 1970s to nearly 25 percent in the early 1980s. India, 
however, required a higher rate of investment to attain compa- 
rable economic growth than did most other low-income devel- 
oping countries, indicating a lower rate of return on 
investments. Part of the adverse Indian experience was 
explained by investment in large, long-gestating, capital-inten- 
sive projects, such as electric power, irrigation, and infrastruc- 
ture. However, delayed completions, cost overruns, and under- 
use of capacity were contributing factors. 

Private savings financed most of India's investment, but by 
the mid-1980s further growth in private savings was difficult 
because they were already at quite a high level. As a result, dur- 
ing the late 1980s India relied increasingly on borrowing from 
foreign sources (see Aid, this ch.). This trend led to a balance 
of payments crisis in 1990; in order to receive new loans, the 
government had no choice but to agree to further measures of 
economic liberalization. This commitment to economic 
reform was reaffirmed by the government that came to power 
in June 1991. 

India's primary sector, including agriculture, forestry, fish- 
ing, mining, and quarrying, accounted for 32.8 percent of GDP 



299 



India: A Counts Stud\ 



in FY 1991 (see table 17, Appendix). The size of the agricul- 
tural sector and its vulnerability to the vagaries of the monsoon 
cause relativelv large fluctuations in the sector's contribution to 
GDP from one vear to another (see Crop Output, ch. 7). 

In FY 1991. the contribution to GDP of industry, including 
manufacturing, construction, and utilities, was 27.4 percent; 
services, including trade, transportation, communications, real 
estate and finance, and public- and private-sector services, con- 
tributed 39. S percent. The steadv increase in the proportion of 
services in the national economv reflects increased 
market-determined processes, such as the spread of rural bank- 
ing, and government activities, such as defense spending (see 
Agricultural Credit, ch. 7; Defense Spending, ch. 10). 

Despite a sometimes disappointing rate of growth, the 
Indian economv was transformed between 1947 and the early 
1990s. The number of kilowatt-hours of electricitv generated, 
for example, increased more than fiftvfold. Steel production 
rose from 1.5 million tons a vear to 14.7 million tons a year. 
The countrv produced space satellites and nuclear-power 
plants, and its scientists and engineers produced an atomic 
explosive device (see Major Research Organizations, this ch.; 
Space and Nuclear Programs, ch. 10). Tife expectancy 
increased from twenty-seven years to fifty-nine years. .Although 
the population increased by 485 million between 1951 and 
1991, the availability of food grains per capita rose from 395 
grams per dav in FY 1950 to 466 grams in FY 1992 (see Struc- 
ture and Dynamics, ch. 2). 

However, considerable dualism remains in the Indian econ- 
omv. Officials and economists make an important distinction 
between the formal and informal sectors of the economv. The 
informal, or unorganized, economv is largely rural and encom- 
passes farming, fishing, forestry and cottage industries. It also 
includes petty vendors and some small-scale mechanized indus- 
trv in both rural and urban areas. The bulk of the population is 
employed in the informal economv. which contributes more 
than 50 percent of GDP. The formal economv consists of large 
units in the modern sector for which statistical data are rela- 
tively crood. The modern sector includes lar^e-scale manufac- 
turing and mining, major financial and commercial businesses, 
and such public-sector enterprises as railroads, telecommunica- 
tions, utilities, and government itself. 

The greatest disappointment of economic development is 
the failure to reduce more substantially India's widespread pov- 



300 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

erty. Studies have suggested that income distribution changed 
little between independence and the early 1990s, although it is 
possible that the poorer half of the population improved its 
position slightly Official estimates of the proportion of the 
population that lives below the poverty line tend to vary sharply 
from year to year because adverse economic conditions, espe- 
cially rises in food prices, are capable of lowering the standard 
of living of many families who normally live just above the sub- 
sistence level. The Indian government's poverty line is based 
on an income sufficient to ensure access to minimum nutri- 
tional standards, and even most persons above the poverty line 
have low levels of consumption compared with much of the 
world. 

Estimates in the late 1970s put the number of people who 
lived in poverty at 300 million, or nearly 50 percent of the pop- 
ulation at the time. Poverty was reduced during the 1980s, and 
in FY 1989 it was estimated that about 26 percent of the popula- 
tion, or 220 million people, lived below the poverty line. Slower 
economic growth and higher inflation in FY 1990 and FY 1991 
reversed this trend. In FY 1991, it was estimated that 332 mil- 
lion people, or 38 percent of the population, lived below the 
poverty line. 

Farmers and other rural residents make up the large major- 
ity of India's poor. Some own very small amounts of land while 
others are field hands, seminomadic shepherds, or migrant 
workers. The urban poor include many construction workers 
and petty vendors. The bulk of the poor work, but low produc- 
tivity and intermittent employment keep incomes low. Poverty 
is most prevalent in the states of Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, 
and Madhya Pradesh, and least prevalent in Haryana, Punjab, 
Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. 

By the early 1990s, economic changes led to the growth in 
the number of Indians with significant economic resources. 
About 10 million Indians are considered upper class, and 
roughly 300 million are part of the rapidly increasing middle 
class. Typical middle-class occupations include owning a small 
business or being a corporate executive, lawyer, physician, 
white-collar worker, or land-owning farmer. In the 1980s, the 
growth of the middle class was reflected in the increased con- 
sumption of consumer durables, such as televisions, refrigera- 
tors, motorcycles, and automobiles. In the early 1990s, 
domestic and foreign businesses hoped to take advantage of 



301 



India: A Ccuntj Study 



India s economic liberalization to increase the range of con- 
sumer products ottered to this market. 

Housing and the ancillarv utilities of sewer and water sys- 
tems lag considerably behind the population's needs. India's 
cities have large shantvtowns built of scrap or readilv available 
natural materials erected on whatever space is available, includ- 
ing; sidewalks. Such dwellings lack piped water, sewerage, and 
electricity. The government has attempted to build housing 
facilities and utilities for urban development, but the efforts 
have fallen far short of demand. Administrative controls and 
other aspects of government polio' have discouraged many pri- 
vate investors from constructing housing units. 

Liberalization in the Ear l\ 1 990s 

Increased borrowing from foreign sources in the late 1950s, 
which helped fuel economic growth, led to pressure on the bal- 
ance of payments. The problem came to a head in August 1990 
when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the price of oil soon doubled. 
In addition, many Indian workers resident in Persian Gulf 
states either lost their jobs or returned home out of fear for 
their safer.", thus reducing the flow of remittances isee Size and 
Composition of the Work Force, this ch.). The direct economic 
impact of the Persian Gulf conflict was exacerbated by domes- 
tic social and political developments. In the earlv 1990s, there 
was violence over two domestic issues: the reservation of a pro- 
portion of public-sector jobs for members of Scheduled Castes 
see Glossary) and the Hindu-Muslim conflict at Ayodhya (see 
Public Worship, ch. 5; Political Issues, ch. S>. The central gov- 
ernment fell in November 1990 and was succeeded by a minor- 
ity government. The cumulative impact of these events shook 
international confidence in India's economic viability, and the 
country found it increasingly difficult to borrow internation- 
ally As a result. India made various agreements with the Inter- 
national Monetary Fund (IMF — see Glossary) and other 
organizations that included commitments to speed up liberal- 
ization (see United Nations, ch. 9). 

In the early 1990s, considerable progress was made in loos- 
ening government regulations, especially in the area of foreign 
trade. Mam" restrictions on private companies were lifted, and 
new areas were opened to private capital. However, India 
remains one of the world s most tight.lv regulated major econo- 
mies. Manv powerful vested interests, including private firms 
that have benefited from protectionism, labor unions, and 



5:_ 



Telephone manufacturing factory, Maharashtra 
Courtesy India Abroad News Service 



much of the bureaucracy, oppose liberalization. There is also 
considerable concern that liberalization will reinforce class and 
regional economic disparities. 

The balance of payments crisis of 1990 and subsequent pol- 
icy changes led to a temporary decline in the GDP growth rate, 
which fell from 6.9 percent in FY 1989 to 4.9 percent in FY 1990 
to 1.1 percent in FY 1991. In March 1995, the estimated growth 
rate for FY 1994 was 5.3 percent. Inflation peaked at 17 percent 
in FY 1991, fell to 9.5 percent in FY 1993, and then accelerated 
again, reaching 11 percent in late FY 1994. This increase was 
attributed to a sharp increase in prices and a shortfall in such 
critical sectors as sugar, cotton, and oilseeds. Many analysts 
agree that the poor suffer most from the increased inflation 
rate and reduced growth rate. 



303 



India: A Country Study 



The Role of Government 

Early Policy Developments 

Many early postindependence leaders, such as Nehru, were 
influenced by socialist ideas and advocated government inter- 
vention to guide the economy, including state ownership of key 
industries. The objective was to achieve high and balanced eco- 
nomic development in the general interest while particular 
programs and measures helped the poor. India's leaders also 
believed that industrialization was the key to economic devel- 
opment. This belief was all the more convincing in India 
because of the country's large size, substantial natural 
resources, and desire to develop its own defense industries. 

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 gave government a 
monopoly in armaments, atomic energy, and railroads, and 
exclusive rights to develop minerals, the iron and steel indus- 
tries, aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, and manufacturing 
of telephone and telegraph equipment. Private companies 
operating in those fields were guaranteed at least ten years 
more of ownership before the government could take them 
over. Some still operate as private companies. 

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 greatly extended 
the preserve of government. There were seventeen industries 
exclusively in the public sector. The government took the lead 
in another twelve industries, but private companies could also 
engage in production. This resolution covered industries pro- 
ducing capital and intermediate goods. As a result, the private 
sector was relegated primarily to production of consumer 
goods. The public sector also expanded into more services. In 
1956 the life insurance business was nationalized, and in 1973 
the general insurance business was also acquired by the public 
sector. Most large commercial banks were nationalized in 1969. 
Over the years, the central and state governments formed 
agencies, and companies engaged in finance, trading, mineral 
exploitation, manufacturing, utilities, and transportation. The 
public sector was extensive and influential throughout the 
economy, although the value of its assets was small relative to 
the private sector. 

Controls over prices, production, and the use of foreign 
exchange, which were imposed by the British during World 
War II, were reinstated soon after independence. The Indus- 
tries (Development and Regulation) Act of 1951 and the Essen- 
tial Commodities Act of 1955 (with subsequent additions) 



304 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

provided the legal framework for the government to extend 
price controls that eventually included steel, cement, drugs, 
nonferrous metals, chemicals, fertilizer, coal, automobiles, tires 
and tubes, cotton textiles, food grains, bread, butter, vegetable 
oils, and other commodities. By the late 1950s, controls were 
pervasive, regulating investment in industry, prices of many 
commodities, imports and exports, and the flow of foreign 
exchange. 

Export growth was long ignored. The government's exten- 
sive controls and pervasive licensing requirements created 
imbalances and structural problems in many parts of the econ- 
omy. Controls were usually imposed to correct specific prob- 
lems but often without adequate consideration of their effect 
on other parts of the economy. For example, the government 
set low prices for basic foods, transportation, and other com- 
modities and services, a policy designed to protect the living 
standards of the poor. However, the policy proved counterpro- 
ductive when the government also limited the output of 
needed goods and services. Price ceilings were implemented 
during shortages, but the ceiling frequently contributed to 
black markets in those commodities and to tax evasion by 
black-market participants. Import controls and tariff policy 
stimulated local manufacturers toward production of import- 
substitution goods, but under conditions devoid of sufficient 
competition or pressure to be efficient. 

Private trading and industrial conglomerates (the so-called 
large houses) existed under the British and continued after 
independence. The government viewed the conglomerates 
with suspicion, believing that they often manipulated markets 
and prices for their own profit. After independence the gov- 
ernment instituted licensing controls on new businesses, espe- 
cially in manufacturing, and on expanding capacity in existing 
businesses. In the 1960s, when shortages of goods were exten- 
sive, considerable criticism was leveled at traders for manipulat- 
ing markets and prices. The result was the 1970 Monopolies 
and Restrictive Practices Act, which was designed to provide 
the government with additional information on the structure 
and investments of all firms that had assets of more than Rs200 
million (for value of the rupee — see Glossary), to strengthen 
the licensing system in order to decrease the concentration of 
private economic power, and to place restraints on certain busi- 
ness practices considered contrary to the public interest. The 
act emphasized the government's aversion to large companies 



305 



India: A Country Study 



in the private sector, but critics contended that the act resulted 
from political motives and not from a strong case against big 
firms. The act and subsequent enforcement restrained private 
investment. 

The extensive controls, the large public sector, and the many 
government programs contributed to a substantial growth in 
the administrative structure of government. The government 
also sought to take on many of the unemployed. The result was 
a swollen, inefficient bureaucracy that took inordinate 
amounts of time to process applications and forms. Business 
leaders complained that they spent more time getting govern- 
ment approval than running their companies. Many observers 
also reported extensive corruption in the huge bureaucracy. 
One consequence was the development of a large under- 
ground economy in small-scale enterprises and the services sec- 
tor. 

India's current economic reforms began in 1985 when the 
government abolished some of its licensing regulations and 
other competition-inhibiting controls. Since 1991 more "new 
economic policies" or reforms have been introduced. Reforms 
include currency devaluations and making currency partially 
convertible, reduced quantitative restrictions on imports, 
reduced import duties on capital goods, decreases in subsidies, 
liberalized interest rates, abolition of licenses for most indus- 
tries, the sale of shares in selected public enterprises, and tax 
reforms. Although many observers welcomed these changes 
and attributed the faster growth rate of the economy in the late 
1980s to them, others feared that these changes would create 
more problems than they solved. The growing dependence of 
the economy on imports, greater vulnerability of its balance of 
payments, reliance on debt, and the consequent susceptibility 
to outside pressures on economic poliq 7 directions caused con- 
cern. The increase in consumerism and the display of conspic- 
uous wealth by the elite exacerbated these fears. 

The pace of liberalization increased after 1991. By the mid- 
1990s, the number of sectors reserved for public ownership was 
slashed, and private-sector investment was encouraged in areas 
such as energy, steel, oil refining and exploration, road build- 
ing, air transportation, and telecommunications. An area still 
closed to the private sector in the mid-1990s was defense indus- 
try. Foreign-exchange regulations were liberalized, foreign 
investment was encouraged, and import regulations were sim- 
plified. The average import-weighted tariff was reduced from 



306 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

87 percent in FY 1991 to 33 percent in FY 1994. Despite these 
changes, the economy remained highly regulated by interna- 
tional standards. The import of many consumer goods was 
banned, and the production of 838 items, mostly consumer 
goods, was reserved for companies with total investment of less 
than Rs6 million. Although the government had sold off 
minority stakes in public-sector companies, it had not in 1995 
given up control of any enterprises, nor had any of the loss- 
making public companies been closed down. Moreover, 
although import duties had been lowered substantially, they 
were still high compared to most other countries. 

Political successes in the mid-1990s by nationalist-oriented 
political parties led to some backlash against foreign invest- 
ment in some parts of India (see Political Parties, ch. 8). In 
early 1995, official charges of serving adulterated products 
were made against a KFC outlet in Bangalore, and Pepsi-Cola 
products were smashed and advertisements defaced in New 
Delhi. The most serious backlash occurred in Maharashtra in 
August 1995 when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Indian 
People's Party)-led state government halted construction of a 
US$2.8 million 2,015-megawatt gas-fired electric-power plant 
being built near Bombay (Mumbai in the Marathi language) by 
another United States company, Enron Corporation. 

Antipoverty Programs 

The government has initiated, sustained, and refined many 
programs since independence to help the poor attain self suffi- 
ciency in food production. Probably the most important initia- 
tive has been the supply of basic commodities, particularly food 
at controlled prices, available throughout the country. The 
poor spend about 80 percent of their income on food while the 
rest of the population spends more than 60 percent. The price 
of food is a major determinant of wage scales. Often when food 
prices rise sharply, rioting and looting follow. Until the late 
1970s, the government frequently had difficulty obtaining ade- 
quate grain supplies in years of poor harvests. During those 
times, states with surpluses of grain were cordoned off to force 
partial sales to public agencies and to keep private traders from 
shipping grain to deficit areas to secure very high prices; state 
governments in surplus-grain areas were often less than coop- 
erative. After the late 1970s, the central government, by hold- 
ing reserve stocks and importing grain adequately and early, 
maintained sufficient supplies to meet the increased demand 



307 



India: A Country Study 



during drought years. It also provided more remunerative 
prices to farmers. 

In rural areas, the government has undertaken programs to 
mitigate the worst effects of adverse monsoon rainfall, which 
affects not only farmers but village artisans and traders when 
the price of grain rises. The government has supplied water by 
financing well digging and, since the early 1980s, by power- 
assisted well drilling; rescinded land taxes for drought areas; 
tried to maintain stable food prices; and provided food 
through a food-for-work program. The actual work accom- 
plished through food-for-work programs is often a secondary 
consideration, but useful projects sometimes result. Employ- 
ment is offered at a low daily wage, usually paid in grain, the 
rationale being that only the truly needy will take jobs at such 
low pay. 

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Indian government programs 
attempted to provide basic needs at stable, low prices; to 
increase income through pricing and regulations, such as sup- 
plying water from irrigation works, fertilizer, and other inputs; 
to foster location of industry in backward areas; to increase 
access to basic social services, such as education, health, and 
potable water supply; and to help needy groups and deprived 
areas. The total money spent on such programs for the poor 
was not discernible from the budget data, but probably 
exceeded 10 percent of planned budget outlays. 

India has had a number of antipoverty programs since the 
early 1960s. These include, among others, the National Rural 
Employment Programme and the Rural Landless Employment 
Guarantee Programme. The National Rural Employment Pro- 
gramme evolved in FY 1980 from the earlier Food for Work 
Programme to use unemployed and underemployed workers 
to build productive community assets. The Rural Landless 
Employment Guarantee Programme was instituted in FY 1983 
to address the plight of the hard-core rural poor by expanding 
employment opportunities and building the rural infrastruc- 
ture as a means of encouraging rapid economic growth. There 
were many problems with the implementation of these and 
otherschemes, but observers credit them with helping reduce 
poverty. To improve the effectiveness of the National Rural 
Employment Programme, in 1989 it was combined with the 
Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme and 
renamed Jawahar Rozgar Yojana, or Jawahar Employment Plan 
(see Development Programs, ch. 7). 



308 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

State governments are important participants in antipoverty 
programs. The constitution assigns responsibility to the states 
in a number of matters, including ownership, redistribution, 
improvement, and taxation of land (see The Constitutional 
Framework, ch. 8). State governments implement most central 
government programs concerned with land reform and the sit- 
uation of small landless farmers. The central government tries 
to establish programs and norms among the states and union 
territories, but implementation has often remained at the 
lower bureaucratic levels. In some matters concerning subsoil 
rights and irrigation projects, the central government exerts 
political and financial leverage to obtain its objectives, but the 
states sometimes modify or retard the impact of central govern- 
ment policies and programs. 

Development Planning 

Planning in India dates back to the 1930s. Even before inde- 
pendence, the colonial government had established a planning 
board that lasted from 1944 to 1946. Private industrialists and 
economists published three development plans in 1944. India's 
leaders adopted the principle of formal economic planning 
soon after independence as an effective way to intervene in the 
economy to foster growth and social justice. 

The Planning Commission was established in 1950. Respon- 
sible only to the prime minister, the commission is indepen- 
dent of the cabinet. The prime minister is chairperson of the 
commission, and the minister of state with independent charge 
for planning and program implementation serves as deputy 
chairperson. A staff drafts national plans under the guidance 
of the commission; draft plans are presented for approval to 
the National Development Council, which consists of the Plan- 
ning Commission and the chief ministers of the states. The 
council can make changes in the draft plan. After council 
approval, the draft is presented to the cabinet and subse- 
quently to Parliament, whose approval makes the plan an oper- 
ating document for central and state governments (see The 
Legislature; Local Government, ch. 8). 

The First Five-Year Plan (FY 1951-55) attempted to stimulate 
balanced economic development while correcting imbalances 
caused by World War II and partition. Agriculture, including 
projects that combined irrigation and power generation, 
received priority. By contrast, the Second Five-Year Plan (FY 
1956-60) emphasized industrialization, particularly basic, 



309 



India: A Country Study 

heavy industries in the public sector, and improvement of the 
economic infrastructure. The plan also stressed social goals, 
such as more equal distribution of income and extension of the 
benefits of economic development to the large number of dis- 
advantaged people. The Third Five-Year Plan (FY 1961-65) 
aimed at a substantial rise in national and per capita income 
while expanding the industrial base and rectifying the neglect 
of agriculture in the previous plan. The third plan called for 
national income to grow at a rate of more than 5 percent a 
year; self-sufficiency in food grains was anticipated in the 
mid-1960s. 

Economic difficulties disrupted the planning process in the 
mid-1960s. In 1962, when a brief war was fought with China on 
the Himalayan frontier, agricultural output was stagnating, 
industrial production was considerably below expectations, 
and the economy was growing at about half of the planned rate 
(see Nehru's Legacy, ch. 1). Defense expenditures increased 
sharply, and the increased foreign aid needed to maintain 
development expenditures eventually provided 28 percent of 
public development spending. Midway through the third plan, 
it was clear that its goals could not be achieved. Food prices 
rose in 1963, causing rioting and looting of grain warehouses 
in 1964. War with Pakistan in 1965 sharply reduced the foreign 
aid available. Successive severe droughts in 1965 and 1966 fur- 
ther disrupted the economy and planning. Three annual plans 
guided development between FY 1966 and FY 1968 while plan 
policies and strategies were reevaluated. Immediate attention 
centered on increasing agricultural growth, stimulating 
exports, and searching for efficient uses of industrial assets. 
Agriculture was to be expanded, largely through the supply of 
inputs to take advantage of new high-yield seeds becoming 
available for food grains. The rupee was substantially devalued 
in 1966, and export incentives were adjusted to promote 
exports. Controls affecting industry were simplified, and 
greater reliance was placed on the price mechanism to achieve 
industrial efficiency. 

The Fourth Five-Year Plan (FY 1969-73) called for a 24 per- 
cent increase over the third plan in real terms of public devel- 
opment expenditures. The public sector accounted for 60 
percent of plan expenditures, and foreign aid contributed 13 
percent of plan financing. Agriculture, including irrigation, 
received 23 percent of public outlays; the rest was mostly spent 
on electric power, industry, and transportation. Although the 



310 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

plan projected national income growth at 5.7 percent a year, 
the realized rate was only 3.3 percent. 

The Fifth Five-Year Plan (FY 1974-78) was drafted in late 
1973 when crude oil prices were rising rapidly; the rising prices 
quickly forced a series of revisions. The plan was subsequently 
approved in late 1976 but was terminated at the end of FY 1977 
because a new government wanted different priorities and pro- 
grams. The fifth plan was in effect only one year, although it 
provided some guidance to investments throughout the 
five-year period. The economy operated under annual plans in 
FY 1978 and FY 1979. 

The Sixth Five-Year Plan (FY 1980-84) was intended to be 
flexible and was based on the principle of annual "rolling" 
plans. It called for development expenditures of nearly Rsl.9 
trillion (in FY 1979 prices), of which 90 percent would be 
financed from domestic sources, 57 percent of which would 
come from the public sector. Public-sector development spend- 
ing would be concentrated in energy (29 percent); agriculture 
and irrigation (24 percent); industry including mining (16 per- 
cent); transportation (16 percent); and social services (14 per- 
cent). In practice, slightly more was spent on social services at 
the expense of transportation and energy. The plan called for 
GDP growth to increase by 5.1 percent a year, a target that was 
surpassed by 0.3 percent. A major objective of the plan was to 
increase employment, especially in rural areas, in order to 
reduce the level of poverty. Poor people were given cows, bul- 
lock carts, and handlooms; however, subsequent studies indi- 
cated that the income of only about 10 percent of the poor 
rose above the poverty level. 

The Seventh Five-Year Plan (FY 1985-89) envisioned a 
greater emphasis on the allocation of resources to energy and 
social spending at the expense of industry and agriculture. In 
practice, the main increase was in transportation and commu- 
nications, which took up 17 percent of public-sector expendi- 
ture during this period. Total spending was targeted at nearly 
Rs3.9 trillion, of which 94 percent would be financed from 
domestic resources, including 48 percent from the public sec- 
tor. The planners assumed that public savings would increase 
and help finance government spending. In practice that 
increase did not occur; instead, the government relied on for- 
eign borrowing for a greater share of resources than expected. 

The schedule for the Eighth Five-Year Plan (FY 1992-96) was 
affected by changes of government and by growing uncertainty 



311 



India: A County Study 



over what role planning could usefully perform in a more lib- 
eral economv. Two annual plans were in effect in FY 1990 and 
FY 1991. The eighth plan was finally launched in April 1992 
and emphasized market-based policy reform rather than quan- 
titative targets. Total spending was planned at RsS.7 trillion, of 
which 94 percent would be financed from domestic resources, 
45 percent of which would come from the public sector. The 
eighth plan included three general goals. First, it sought to cut 
back the public sector bv selling off failing and inessential 
industries while encouraging private investment in such sectors 
as power, steel, and transport. Second, it proposed that agricul- 
ture and rural development have priority Third, it sought to 
renew the assault on illiteracy and improve other aspects of 
social infrastructure, such as the provision of fresh drinking 
water. Government documents issued in 1992 indicated that 
GDP growth was expected to increase from around 5 percent a 
vear during the seventh plan to 5.6 percent a vear during the 
eighth plan. However, in 1994 economists expected annual 
growth to be around 4 percent during the period of the eighth 
plan. 

Four decades of planning show that India's economy a mix 
of public and private enterprise, is too large and diverse to be 
whollv predictable or responsive to directions of the planning 
authorities. Actual results usually differ in important respects 
from plan targets. Major shortcomings include insufficient 
improvement in income distribution and alleviation of poverty 
delaved completions and cost overruns on manv public-sector 
projects, and far too small a return on many public-sector 
investments. Even though the plans have turned out to be less 
effective than expected, thev help guide investment priorities, 
policv recommendations, and financial mobilization. 

Finance 

The earlv governments after independence operated with 
onlv modest budget deficits, but in the 1970s and 1980s the 
amount of the budget deficit as a proportion of GDP increased 
gradually, reaching 8.4 percent in FY 1990. Following eco- 
nomic reforms, the deficit declined to 6.7 percent by FY 1994. 
More than SO percent of the public debt was financed from 
domestic sources, but the proportion of foreign debt rose 
steadily in the late 1980s. However, although foreign aid to 
India was substantial, it was much lower than most other devel- 
oping countries when calculated on a per capita basis. Banking 



312 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

and credit were dominated by government-controlled institu- 
tions, but the importance of the private sector in financial ser- 
vices was increasing slowly. 

Budget 

India's public finance system follows the British pattern. The 
constitution establishes the supremacy of the bicameral Parlia- 
ment — specifically the Lok Sabha (House of the People) — in 
financial matters. No central government taxes are levied and 
no government expenditure from public funds disbursed with- 
out an act of Parliament, which also scrutinizes and audits all 
government accounts to ensure that expenditures are legally 
authorized and properly spent. Proposals for taxation or 
expenditures, however, may be initiated only within the Coun- 
cil of Ministers — specifically by the minister of finance. The 
minister of finance is required to submit to Parliament, usually 
on the last day of February, a financial statement detailing the 
estimated receipts and expenditures of the central government 
for the forthcoming fiscal year and a financial review of the 
current fiscal year. 

The Lok Sabha has one month to review and modify the gov- 
ernment's budget proposals. If by April 1, the beginning of the 
fiscal year, the parliamentary discussion of the budget has not 
been completed, the budget as proposed by the minister of 
finance goes into effect, subject to retroactive modifications 
after the parliamentary review. On completion of its budget 
discussions, the Lok Sabha passes the annual appropriations 
act, authorizing the executive to spend money, and the finance 
act, authorizing the executive to impose and collect taxes. Sup- 
plemental requests for funds are presented during the course 
of the fiscal year to cover emergencies, such as war or other 
catastrophes. The bills are forwarded to the Rajya Sabha 
(Council of States — the upper house of Parliament) for com- 
ment. The Lok Sabha, however, is not bound by the comments, 
and the Rajya Sabha cannot delay passage of money bills. When 
signed by the president, the bills become law. The Lok Sabha 
cannot increase the request for funds submitted by the execu- 
tive, nor can it authorize new expenditures. Taxes passed by 
Parliament may be retroactive. 

Each state government maintains its own budget, prepared 
by the state's minister of finance in consultation with appropri- 
ate officials of the central government. Primary control over 
state finances rests with the state legislature in the same man- 



313 



In d id : A Conn try Stu dy 



ner as at the central government level. State finances are super- 
vised by the central government, however, through the 
comptroller and the auditor general; the latter reviews state 
government accounts annually and reports the findings to the 
appropriate state governor for submission to the state's legisla- 
ture. The central and state budgets consist of a budget for cur- 
rent expenditures, known as the budget on revenue account, 
and a capital budget for economic and social development 
expenditures. 

The national railroad (Indian Railways), the largest public- 
sector enterprise, and the Department of Posts and Telegraph 
have their own budgets, funds, and accounts (see Railroads; 
Telecommunications, this ch.). The appropriations and dis- 
bursements under their budgets are subject to the same form 
of parliamentary and audit control as other government reve- 
nues and expenditures. Dividends accrue to the central gov- 
ernment, and deficits are subsidized by it, a pattern that holds 
true also, directly or indirectly, for other government enter- 
prises. 

During the eighth plan, the states were expected to spend 
nearly Rsl.9 trillion, or 42.9 percent of the public outlay. 
Because of its greater revenue sources, the central government 
shared with the states its receipts from personal income taxes 
and certain excise taxes. It also collected other minor taxes, the 
total proceeds of which were transferred to the states. The divi- 
sion of the shared taxes is determined bv financial commis- 
sions established by the president, usually at five-year intervals. 
In the early 1990s, the states received 75 percent of the revenue 
collected from income taxes and around 43 percent of the 
excise taxes. The central government also provided the states 
with grants to meet their commitments. In FY 1991, these 
grants and the states' share of taxes collected by the central 
government amounted to 40.9 percent of the total revenue of 
state governments. 

The states' share of total public revenue collected declined 
from 48 percent in FY 1955 to about 42 percent in the late 
1970s, and to about 33 percent in the early 1990s. An impor- 
tant cause of the decline was the diminished importance of the 
land revenue tax, which traditionally had been the main direct 
tax on agriculture. This tax declined from 8 percent of all state 
and central tax revenues in FY 1950 to less than 1 percent in 
the 1980s and early 1990s. The states have jurisdiction over 
taxes levied on land and agricultural income, and vested inter- 



314 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

ests exerted pressure on the states not to raise agricultural taxa- 
tion. As a result, in the 1980s and early 1990s agriculture 
largely escaped significant taxation, although there has long 
been nationwide discussion about increasing land taxes or 
instituting some sort of tax on incomes of the richer portion of 
the farm community. The share of direct taxes in GDP 
increased from 2.1 percent in FY 1991 to 2.8 percent in FY 
1994. 

Since independence government has favored more politi- 
cally palatable indirect taxes— customs and excise duties — over 
direct taxes. In the 1980s and early 1990s, indirect taxes 
accounted for around 75 percent of all tax revenue collected 
by the central government. State governments relied heavily on 
sales taxes. Overall, indirect taxes accounted for 84.1 percent 
of all government tax revenues in FY 1990. Total government 
tax revenues amounted to 17.1 percent of GDP in that year, up 
from 9.0 percent in FY 1960, 11.5 percent in FY 1970, and 14.9 
percent in FY 1980. In FY 1990, the share of the public sector in 
GDP was 26.4 percent. In terms of rupees (in current prices), 
total government income rose from Rs259.8 billion in FY 1981 
to Rsl.3 trillion in FY1992 (see table 18, Appendix). 

Comprehensive tax reforms were implemented with the FY 
1985 budget. Corporate tax was cut, income taxes simplified 
and lowered for high-income groups, and wealth taxes 
reduced. Tax receipts in FY 1985 rose by 20 percent over FY 
1984 as a result of tightened enforcement, and taxpayers 
responded to lower taxes with greater compliance. In FY 1986, 
another major change was made with the launching of a 
long-term program of tax reform designed to eliminate annual 
changes, which had produced uncertainty. However, in FY 
1987, when the monsoon failed, the government raised taxes 
on higher income groups. The emergency budget of FY 1991, 
designed to cope with the nation's 1990 balance of payments 
crisis, increased indirect and corporate taxes, but the budgets 
for FY 1992 and FY 1993 reflected the policy of economic liber- 
alization. They reduced and simplified direct taxes, removed 
the wealth tax from financial investments, and indexed the cap- 
ital gains tax. The highest marginal rate of personal income tax 
was 42.5 percent in FY 1992. 

Fiscal Administration 

Historically, the Indian government has pursued a cautious 
policy with regard to financing budgets, allowing only small 



315 



India: A Counties Study 



amounts of deficit spending. Budget deficits increased in the 
late 1980s, and the necessity of financing these deficits from 
foreign borrowing contributed to the 1990 balance of pay- 
ments crisis. The central government budget deficit reached 
8.4 percent of GDP in FY 1990, up from 2.6 percent in FY 1970, 
5.9 percent in FY19S0. and 7.8 percent in FY 1989. The deficit 
was cut to 5.9 percent in FY 1991 and 5.2 percent in FY 1992, 
but widened to 7.4 percent in FY 1993. It was expected to 
recede to 6.2 percent in FY 1995. 

The central government's budget deficits during the 1980s 
increased the total public debt rapidly until in FY 1991 it stood 
at Rs3.9 trillion. The bulk of this debt was owed to citizens and 
domestic institutions and firms, particularly the central bank. 
Readers of Indian monetary statistics should be alert to the use 
of the terms lakh (see Glossary) and crore (see Glossary), which 
are used to express higher numbers. 

Monetary Process 

The basic elements of the financial system were established 
during British rule (1757-1947). The national currency, the 
rupee, had long been used domestically before independence 
and even circulated abroad, for example, in the Persian Gulf 
region. Foreign banks, mainly British and including some from 
such other parts of the empire as Hong Kong, provided bank- 
ing and other services. The Reserve Bank of India was formed 
in 1935 as a private bank, but it also carried out some central 
bank functions. This colonial banking system, however, was 
geared to foreign trade and short-term loans. Banking was con- 
centrated in the major port cities. 

The Reserve Bank was nationalized on January 1, 1949, and 
given broader powers. It was the bank of issue for all rupee 
notes higher than the one-rupee denomination; the agent of 
the Ministry of Finance in controlling foreign exchange; and 
the banker to the central and state governments, commercial 
banks, state cooperative banks, and other financial institutions. 
The Reserve Bank formulated and administered monetary pol- 
icv to promote stable prices and higher production. It was 
given increasing responsibilities for the development of bank- 
ing and credit and to coordinate banking and credit with the 
five-year plans. The Reserve Bank had a number of tools with 
which to affect commercial bank credit. 

.After independence the government sought to adapt the 
banking system to promote development and formed a num- 



316 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

ber of specialized institutions to provide credit to industry, agri- 
culture, and small businesses. Banking penetrated rural areas, 
and agricultural and industrial credit cooperatives were pro- 
moted. Deposit insurance and a system of postal savings banks 
and offices fostered use by small savers. Subsidized credit was 
provided to particular groups or activities considered in need 
and which deserved such help. A credit guarantee corporation 
covered loans by commercial banks to small traders, transport 
operators, self-employed persons, and other borrowers not 
otherwise effectively covered by major institutions. The system 
effectively reached all kinds of savers and provided credit to 
many different customers. 

The government nationalized fourteen major private com- 
mercial banks in 1969 and six more in 1980. Nationalization 
forced commercial banks increasingly to meet the credit 
requirements of the weaker sections of the nation and to elimi- 
nate monopolization by vested interests of large industry, 
trade, and agriculture. 

The banking system expanded rapidly after nationalization. 
The number of bank branches, for instance, increased from 
about 7,000 in 1969 to more than 60,000 in 1994, two-thirds of 
which were in rural areas. The deposit base rose from Rs50 bil- 
lion in 1969 to around Rs3.5 trillion in 1994. Nevertheless, cur- 
rency accounted for well over 50 percent of all the money 
supply circulating among the public. In 1992 the nationalized 
banks held 93 percent of all deposits. 

In FY 1990, twenty-three foreign banks operated in India. 
The most important were ANZ Grindlays Bank, Citibank, the 
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and Standard 
Chartered Bank. 

Public-sector banks are required to reserve their lending 
based on 40 percent of their deposits for priority sectors, espe- 
cially agriculture, at favorable rates. In addition, 35 percent of 
their deposits have to be held in liquid form to satisfy statutory 
liquidity requirements, and 15 percent are needed to meet the 
cash reserve requirements of the Reserve Bank. Both these per- 
centages represent an easing of earlier requirements, but only 
a small proportion of public-sector banks' resources can be 
deployed freely. In late 1994, the rate of interest on bank loans 
was deregulated, but deposit rates were still subject to ceilings. 

More than 50 percent of bank lending is to the government 
sector. With the onset of economic reform, India's banks were 
experiencing major financial losses as the result of low produc- 



317 



India: A Country Study 



tivity, bad loans, and poor capitalization. Seeking to stabilize 
the banking industry, the Reserve Bank of India developed new 
reporting formats and has initiated takeovers and mergers of 
smaller banks that were operating with financial losses. 

India has a rapidly expanding stock market that in 1993 
listed around 5,000 companies in fourteen stock exchanges, 
although only the stocks of about 400 of these companies were 
actively traded. Financial institutions and government bodies 
controlled an estimated 45 percent of all listed capital. In April 
1992, the Bombay stock market, the nation's largest with a mar- 
ket capital of US$65.1 billion, collapsed, in part because of rev- 
elations about financial malpractice amounting to USS2 
billion. Afterward, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, 
the government's capital market regulator, implemented 
reforms designed to strengthen investor confidence in the 
stock market. In the mid-1990s, foreign institutional investors 
took greater interest than ever before in the Indian stock mar- 
kets, investing around USS2 billion in FY 1993 alone. 

Despite increases in energy costs and other pressures from 
the world economy, for most of the period since independence 
India has not experienced severe inflation. The underlying 
average rate of inflation, however, has tended to rise. Con- 
sumer prices rose at an annual average of 2.1 percent in the 
1950s, 6.3 percent in the 1960s, 7.8 percent in the 1970s, and 
8.5 percent in the 1980s. 

Three factors lav behind India's relative price stability. First, 
the government has intervened, either directlv or indirectlv, to 
keep stable the price of certain staples, including wheat, rice, 
cloth, and sugar. Second, monetary regulation has restricted 
growth in the money supply. Third, the overall influence of the 
labor unions on wages has been small because of the weakness 
of the unions in India's labor surplus economy. 

Foreign Economic Relations 
Aid 

Since independence India has had to draw on foreign invest- 
ments to finance part of its economic development. .Although 
the government has attempted to be as self-reliant as possible, 
the absolute amount of foreign aid received has been high. In 
per capita terms, however, it has been much less than most 
other developing countries receive. 



318 



Two of the many modes of transportation found in India 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



In August 1958, the World Bank (see Glossary) organized 
the Aid-to-india Consortium, consisting of the World Bank 
Group and thirteen countries: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Can- 
ada, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany (at that time, 
West Germany), France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, 
Sweden, and the United States. The consortium was formed to 
coordinate aid and establish priorities among India's major 
sources of foreign assistance and to simplify India's requests for 
aid based on its plans for development. Consortium aid was 
bilateral government-to-government aid from the thirteen con- 
sortium countries, and almost all of the aid, including that 
from the World Bank Group, was for specific projects judged to 
be valuable contributions to India's development. Of the Rs630 
billion in aid authorized by all aid donors between FY 1974 and 
FY 1989, more than 60 percent was provided by the consor- 
tium. 



319 



India: A Country Study 

Collectively, the Western nations have donated a substantial 
amount of aid to India. In 1980 this aid totaled nearly US$1.5 
billion and reached US$2.5 billion in 1990. In 1992 Western 
aid reached a new height: US$3.9 billion, which represented 
49.8 percent of all Western multilateral and bilateral aid given 
to South Asian nations that year. The largest bilateral donor is 
Japan. Between 1984 and 1993, Japan's official development 
assistance grants to India totaled US$337 million. Much 
greater than the outright grants has been Japan's large-scale 
loan program, which supports economic infrastructure devel- 
opment (power plants and delivery systems, and road improve- 
ment) and environmental protection. Between 1984 and 1993, 
Japanese loans to India totaled nearly US$2.4 billion. A ¥125 
billion (US$1.2 billion) loan financing major projects was 
granted in December 1994, bringing Japanese loans to India 
since 1957 to a total of ¥1.6 trillion. 

United States assistance was significant in the late 1950s and 
1960s but, because of strained India-United States relations, 
fell off sharply in the 1970s (see United States, ch. 9). The 
United States accounted for 8.6 percent of all of the aid India 
received from independence through FY 1988, but for only 0.7 
percent in FY 1989 and 0.6 percent in FY 1990. United States 
aid to India remained relatively insignificant in the early 1990s 
when it took the form of grants for food aid and consultants in 
a wide variety of economic growth areas, such as computers, 
steel, telecommunications, and energy production. In FY 1993, 
actual United States obligations through the United States 
Agency for International Development totaled almost US$161 
million. The bulk of this aid was provided as United States Pub- 
lic Law 480 food aid grants with lesser amounts for develop- 
ment assistance (including energy and the environment, 
population control, child survival, acquired immune deficiency 
syndrome (AIDS) prevention, and economic growth) and 
housing guaranty loans. Germany and Britain also have sub- 
stantial aid-to-india programs. 

Among countries not in the World Bank consortium, the 
Soviet Union was the most important contributor, providing 
more than 16 percent of all aid between 1947 and FY 1988. 
Since 1991, however, Russia has provided little aid. 

About 90 percent of all aid received by India has been in the 
form of loans. Aid disbursements from all providers for FY 1990 
were Rs67 billion. 



320 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

India maintains a small but well-established foreign aid pro- 
gram of its own. In FY 1990, Rsl.6 billion of aid was authorized, 
of which Rs582 million was for Bhutan and Rs578 million for 
Nepal. Bangladesh and Vietnam received significant amounts 
of aid during the 1980s, but, as the result of changing world 
political and economic conditions, these programs were small 
by the early 1990s (see South Asia; Southeast Asia, ch. 9). 

Trade 

Despite its size, India plays a relatively small role in the world 
economy. Until the 1980s, the government did not make 
exports a priority. In the 1950s and 1960s, Indian officials 
believed that trade was biased against developing countries and 
that prospects for exports were severely limited. Therefore, the 
government aimed at self-sufficiency in most products through 
import substitution, with exports covering the cost of residual 
import requirements. Foreign trade was subjected to strict gov- 
ernment controls, which consisted of an all-inclusive system of 
foreign exchange and direct controls over imports and 
exports. As a result, India's share of world trade shrank from 
2.4 percent in FY 1951 to 0.4 percent in FY 1980. Largely 
because of oil price increases in the 1970s, which contributed 
to balance of payments difficulties, governments in the 1970s 
and 1980s placed more emphasis on the promotion of exports. 
They hoped exports would provide foreign exchange needed 
for the import of oil and high-technology capital goods. Never- 
theless, in the early 1990s India's share of world trade stood at 
only 0.5 percent. In FY 1992, imports accounted for 9.3 percent 
of GDP and exports for 7.7 percent of GDP. 

Based on trends throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, it 
appears likely that the balance of trade will remain negative for 
the foreseeable future (see table 19, Appendix). The 1979 
increase in the price of oil produced a Rs58.4 billion deficit in 
FY 1980, close to 5 percent of GNP. The deficit was barely 
reduced in nominal rupee terms over the next five years, 
although it improved considerably as a share of GNP (to 2.3 
percent in FY 1984) and in dollar terms (from US$7.4 billion 
in FY 1980 to US$4.3 billion in FY 1984). Pressure on the bal- 
ance of trade continued through the late 1980s and worsened 
with the attempted annexation of Kuwait by Iraq in August 
1990, which led to a temporary but sharp increase in the price 
of oil. In FY 1990, the balance of trade deficit reached a record 
level in rupees (Rsl06.5 billion) and in dollars (US$6 billion). 



321 



India: A Country Study 

Import controls and devaluation of the rupee allowed the 
trade deficit to fall to US$1.6 billion in FY 1991. However, it 
widened to USS3.3 billion in FY 1992 before falling to an esti- 
mated USS1 billion in FY 1993. However, one optimistic sign, 
noted by India's minister of finance in March 1995, was that 
exports had come to finance 90 percent of India's imports, 
compared with only 60 percent in the mid-1980s. 

No one product dominates India's exports. In FY 1993, 
handicrafts, gems, and jewelry formed the most important sec- 
tor and accounted for an estimated US$4.9 billion (22.2 per- 
cent) of exports. Since the early 1990s, India has become the 
world's largest processor of diamonds (imported in the rough 
from South Africa and then fabricated into jewelry for export). 
Along with other semiprecious commodities, such as gold, 
India's gems and jewelry accounted for 11 percent of its for- 
eign-exchange receipts in early 1993. Textiles and ready-made 
garments combined were also an important category, account- 
ing for an estimated US$4.1 billion (18.5 percent) of exports. 
Other significant exports include industrial machinery, leather 
products, chemicals and related products (see table 20, Appen- 
dix). 

The dominant imports are petroleum products, valued in FY 
1993 at nearly USS5.8 billion, or 24.7 percent of principal 
imports, and capital goods, amounting to US$4.2 billion, or 
21.8 percent of principal imports. Other important import cat- 
egories are chemicals, dyes, plastics, pharmaceuticals, uncut 
precious stones, iron and steel, fertilizers, nonferrous metals, 
and pulp paper and paper products (see table 21, Appendix). 

India's most important trading partners are the United 
States, Japan, the European Union, and nations belonging to 
the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries 
(OPEC). From the 1950s until 1991, India also had close trade 
links with the Soviet Union, but the breakup of that nation into 
fifteen independent states led to a decline of trade with the 
region. In FY 1993, some 30 percent of all imports came from 
the European Union, 22.4 percent from OPEC nations, 11.7 
percent from the United States, and 6.6 percent from Japan. In 
that same year, 26 percent of all exports were to the European 
Union, 18 percent to the United States, 7.8 percent to Japan, 
and 10.7 to the OPEC nations (see table 22, Appendix). 

Trade and investment with the United States seemed likely 
to experience an upswing following a January 1995 trade mis- 
sion from the United States led by Secretary of Commerce 



322 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

Ronald H. Brown and including top executives from twenty-six 
United States companies. During the weeklong visit, some 
US$7 billion in business deals were agreed on, mostly in the 
areas of infrastructure development, transportation, power and 
communication systems, food processing, health care services, 
insurance and financing projects, and automotive catalytic con- 
verters. In turn, greater access for Indian goods in United 
States markets was sought by Indian officials. 

In February 1995, in a bid to improve commercial prospects 
in Southeast Asia, India signed a four-part agreement with the 
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN — see Glos- 
sary). The pact covers trade, investment, science and technol- 
ogy, and tourism, and there are prospects for further 
agreements on joint ventures, banks, and civil aviation. 

India's balance of payments position is closely related to the 
balance of trade. Foreign aid and remittances from Indians 
employed overseas, however, make the balance of payments 
more favorable than the balance of trade (see Size and Compo- 
sition of the Work Force, this ch.). 

Foreign- Exchange System 

The central government has wide powers to control transac- 
tions in foreign exchange. Until 1992 all foreign investments 
and the repatriation of foreign capital required prior approval 
of the government. The Foreign-Exchange Regulation Act, 
which governs foreign investment, rarely allowed foreign 
majority holdings. However, a new foreign investment policy 
announced in July 1991 prescribed automatic approval for for- 
eign investments in thirty-four industries designated high pri- 
ority, up to an equity limit of 51 percent. Initially the 
government required that a company's automatic approval 
must rely on matching exports and dividend repatriation, but 
in May 1992 this requirement was lifted, except for low-priority 
sectors. In 1994 foreign and nonresident Indian investors were 
allowed to repatriate not only their profits but also their capi- 
tal. Indian exporters are also free to use their export earnings 
as they see fit. However, transfer of capital abroad by Indian 
nationals is only permitted in special circumstances, such as 
emigration. Foreign exchange is automatically made available 
for imports for which import licenses are issued. 

Because foreign-exchange transactions are so tightly con- 
trolled, Indian authorities are able to manage the exchange 
rate, and from 1975 to 1992 the rupee was tied to a trade- 



323 



India: A Country Study 



weighted basket of currencies. In February 1992, the govern- 
ment began moves to make the rupee convertible, and in 
March 1993 a single floating exchange rate was implemented. 
In July 1995, Rs31.81 were worth USS1, compared with Rs7.86 
in 1980, Rsl2.37 in 1985, and Rsl7.50 in 1990. 

External Debt 

India has frequently encountered balance of payments diffi- 
culties (see table 23, Appendix). The usual recourse has been 
to contract imports, thereby reducing production and eco- 
nomic growth, although the amount of foreign aid available 
has been an important factor in how harsh the restrictions have 
become. Following the first round of oil price increases in 
1973-74, increased foreign aid and some belt-tightening over- 
came the country's balance of payments problems. The growth 
of exports and the increased remittances from Indians working 
abroad in the late 1970s permitted a buildup of substantial for- 
eign-currency reserves. Toward the end of the 1970s, the coun- 
try's external payments situation was more favorable than it 
had been for many years. 

The second large oil price increase, in the 1979-80 period, 
quicklv altered India's terms of trade and balance of payments 
situation. Between FY 1978 and FY 1980, India's oil bill 
increased threefold, by about USS4.6 billion. The deficit on the 
balance of trade rose from US$1.5 billion in FY 1979 to US$7.7 
billion in FY 1980. Officials negotiated a substantial loan from 
the IMF, which, along with the foreign-exchange reserves, for- 
eign aid, and export possibilities, made adjustments possible. 
The intent was to keep annual economic growth at 5 percent 
or more to reduce poverty, while making structural adjust- 
ments in the economy to compensate for the change in the 
external environment. Nonetheless, the external debt rose 
from USS20.6 billion in 1980 to nearly US$70.2 billion in 1990. 
In FY 1990, commercial loans accounted for 26.3 percent of 
the external debt: loans from international institutions, espe- 
cially the World Bank, made up 45.2 percent: borrowing from 
foreign governments accounted for 28.5 percent. The largest 
sums were owed to Japan, Germany, and the United States. At 
the time of the economic crisis of 1990, external debt was 
increasing at around US$8 billion a year. By 1993-94, the 
annual increase had been cut to less than US$1 billion and was 
expected to be further reduced. India's foreign currency 



324 



Character and Structure of the Economy 



reserves, which stood at US$1 billion in June 1991, had 
reached a record level of US$20 billion by March 1995. 

Labor 

Size and Composition of the Work Force 

Based on the 1991 census, the government estimated that 
the labor force had grown by more than 65 million since 1981 
and that the total number of "main workers" — the "economi- 
cally active population" — had reached 285.9 million people. 
This total did not include Jammu and Kashmir, which was not 
enumerated in the 1991 census. Labor force statistics for 1991 
covered nine main-worker "industrial" categories: cultivators 
(39 percent of the main-worker force); agricultural laborers 
(26 percent); livestock, forestry, fishing, hunting, plantations, 
orchards, and allied activities (2 percent); mining and quarry- 
ing (1 percent); manufacturing (household 2 percent, other 
than household 7 percent); construction (2 percent); trade 
and commerce (8 percent); transportation, storage, and com- 
munications (3 percent); and "other services" (10 percent). 
Another 28.2 million "marginal workers" were also counted in 
the census but not tabulated among the nine categories even 
though unpaid farm and family enterprise workers were 
counted among the nine categories. Of the total work force — 
both main and marginal workers — 29 percent were women, 
and nearly 78 percent worked in rural areas. 

Included in the labor force are some 55 million children, 
other than those working directly for their parents. The Minis- 
try of Labour and nongovernmental organizations estimate 
that there are 25 million children employed in the agricultural 
sector, 20 million in service jobs (hotels, shops, and as servants 
in homes), and 5 million in the handloom, carpet-making, 
gem-cutting, and match-making industries. With mixed suc- 
cess, nongovernmental organizations monitor the child labor 
market for abuse and conformity to child labor laws. 

In government organizations throughout the nation and in 
nonagricultural enterprises with twenty-five persons or more in 
1991, the public sector employed nearly 19 million people 
compared with about 8 million people employed in the private 
sector. Most of the growth in the organized work force between 
1970 and 1990 was in the public sector. Observers expected 
that this trend might be reversed if the government's policy of 
economic liberalization continued. Labor law makes it very dif- 



325 



India: A Country Study 

ficultfor companies to lay off workers. Some observers feel that 
this restriction deters companies from hiring because they fear 
carrying a bloated workforce in case of an economic turndown. 

A new source of employment appeared after OPEC sharply 
increased crude oil prices in 1974. The Middle East 
oil-exporting countries quickly undertook massive develop- 
ment programs based on their large oil revenues. Most of these 
countries required the importation of labor, both skilled and 
unskilled, and India became one of many nations supplying 
the labor. Because some labor agents and employers took 
advantage of expatriate workers, especially those with little edu- 
cation or few skills, in 1983 India enacted a law governing 
workers going abroad. In general, the new legislation provided 
more protection and required fairer treatment of Indians 
employed outside the country. By 1983 some 900,000 Indian 
workers were registered as temporary residents in the Middle 
East. In the mid-1980s, there was a shift in the kinds of skills 
needed. Fewer laborers, metalworkers, and engineers, for 
example, were required for construction projects, but the need 
for maintenance workers and operating staff in power plants, 
hospitals, and offices increased. In 1990 it was estimated that 
more than 1 million Indians were resident in the Middle East. 
India benefited not only from the opening of job opportunides 
but also from the remittances the workers sent back, which 
amounted to around US$4.3 billion of foreign exchange in FY 
1988. Both employment and remittances suffered as a result of 
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when about 180,000 Indian workers 
were displaced. In the mid-1990s, the outlook for Indian 
employment in the Middle East was only fair. 

India's labor force exhibits extremes ranging from large 
numbers of illiterate workers unaccustomed to machinery or 
routine, to a sizable pool of highly educated scientists, techni- 
cians, and engineers, capable of working anywhere in the 
world. A substantial number of skilled people have left India to 
work abroad; the country has suffered a brain drain since inde- 
pendence. Nonetheless, many remain in India working along- 
side a trained industrial and commercial work force. 
Administrative skills, particularly necessary in large projects or 
programs, are in short supply, however. In the mid-1990s, sala- 
ries for top administrators and technical staff rose sharply, 
partly in response to the arrival of foreign companies in India. 



326 



\' 1 



Indian Oil Corporation refinery in Guwahati, Assam 
Courtesy Indian Ministry of External Affairs 

Labor Relations 

The Trade Unions Act of 1926 provided recognition and 
protection for a nascent Indian labor union movement. The 
number of unions grew considerably after independence, but 
most unions are small and usually active in only one firm. 
Union membership is concentrated in the organized sector, 
and in the early 1990s total membership was about 9 million. 
Many unions are affiliated with regional or national federa- 
tions, the most important of which are the Indian National 
Trade Union Congress, the All-India Trade Union Congress, 
the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, the Indian Workers' Associ- 
ation, and the United Trade Union Congress. Politicians have 
often been union leaders, and some analysts believe that strikes 
and other labor protests are called primarily to further the 
interests of political parties rather than to promote the inter- 
ests of the work force. 



327 



India: A Country Study 



The government recorded 1,825 strikes and lockouts in 
1990. As a result, 24.1 million workdays were lost, 10.6 million 
to strikes and 13.5 million to lockouts. More than 1.3 million 
workers were involved in these labor disputes. The number and 
seriousness of strikes and lockouts have varied from year to 
year. However, the figures for 1990 and preliminary data from 
1991 indicate declines from levels reached in the 1980s, when 
in some years as many as 35 million workdays were lost because 
of labor disputes. 

The isolated, insecure, and exploited laborers in rural areas 
and in the urban unorganized sectors present a stark contrast 
to the position of unionized workers in many modern enter- 
prises. In the early 1990s, there were estimates that between 10 
percent and 20 percent of agricultural workers were bonded 
laborers. The International Commission of Jurists, studying 
India's bonded labor, defines such a person as one who works 
for a creditor or someone in the creditor's family against nomi- 
nal wages in cash or kind until the creditor, who keeps the 
books and sets the prices, declares the loan repaid, often with 
usurious rates of interest. The system sometimes extends to a 
debtor's wife and children, who are employed in appalling 
working conditions and exposed to sexual abuse. The constitu- 
tion, as interpreted by India's Supreme Court, and a 1976 law 
prohibit bonded labor. Implementation of the prohibition, 
however, has been inconsistent in many rural areas. 

Many in the urban unorganized sector are self-employed 
laborers, street vendors, petty traders, and other services pro- 
viders who receive little income. Along with the unemployed, 
they have no unemployment insurance or other benefits. 

Industry 

At independence, industrialization was viewed as the engine 
of growth for the rest of the economy and the supplier of jobs 
to reduce poverty. By the early 1990s, substantial progress had 
been made, but industrial growth had failed to live up to expec- 
tations. Industrial production rose an average of 6.1 percent in 
the 1950s, 5.3 percent in the 1960s, and 4.2 percent in the 
1970s. Although this increase was respectable, it was less than 
the rate achieved by some other developing countries and less 
than what the planners expected and the economy needed to 
bring about a large reduction in poverty. The emphasis on 
large-scale, capital-intensive industries created far fewer jobs 
than the estimated 10 million annual entrants into the labor 



328 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

force required. Hence unemployment and underemployment 
remained growing problems. In the 1980s, however, industrial 
production rose at an average rate of 6.6 percent. Observers 
believed that this increase was largely a response to economic 
liberalization, which led to increased investment and competi- 
tion. 

Government Policies 

Government has played an important role in industry since 
independence. The government has both owned a large pro- 
portion of industrial establishments and has tightly regulated 
the private sector. From the late 1970s, the government sought 
to reduce its role, but progress remained slow throughout the 
1980s. The Congress (I) government that came to power in 
June 1991 had a renewed commitment to cutting back the role 
of government, and in the mid-1990s the liberalization pro- 
gram made progress, although many uncertainties remained 
about its implementation. 

The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 gave the govern- 
ment the go-ahead to build and operate key industries, which 
largely meant those producing capital and intermediate goods 
(see Early Policy Developments, this ch.). This policy partly 
reflected socialist ideas then current in India. It was believed 
that public ownership of basic industry was necessary to ensure 
development in the interest of the whole population. The deci- 
sion also reflected the belief that private industrialists would 
find establishment of many of the basic industries on the scale 
that the country needed either unattractive or beyond their 
financial capabilities. Moreover, there was concern that private 
industrialists could enlarge their profits by dominating markets 
in key commodities. The industrial policy resolutions of 1948 
and 1956 delineated the lines between the public and private 
sectors and stressed the need for a large degree of 
self-sufficiency in manufacturing, the basic strategy that guided 
industrialization until the mid-1980s. 

Another early decision on industrial policy mandated that 
defense industries would be developed by the public sector. 
Building defense industries for a modern military force 
required the concomitant development of heavy industries, 
including metallurgy and machine tools. Production often 
started under foreign licensing, but as much as possible, design 
and production became Indianized. India was one of only a few 



329 



India: A Country Studx 



developing countries to produce a variety of high-technologv 
militarv equipment to supply its own needs. 

Before independence there was a strong tendency for own- 
ership or control of much of the large-scale private industrial 
economv to be concentrated in managing agencies, which 
became powerful under the British because thev had access to 
London money markets. Through diversified investments and 
interlocking directorates, the individuals who controlled the 
managing agencies controlled much of the preindependence 
economv. After independence Parliament passed legislation to 
restrain further concentration, used the development of the 
stock market to induce the sale of stock in tightly held compa- 
nies to the public, and applied high corporate tax rates to such 
companies. It also attempted to offset the monopolv effects of 
the managing agencies bv fixing prices on a number of basic 
commodities, including cement, steel, and coal, and assumed 
considerable control of their distribution. The government 
eventually abolished some of the managing agencies in 1969 
and the remainder in 1971. In 1970 the Monopolies and 
Restrictive Practices Act supplied the government with addi- 
tional authority to diminish concentrations of private eco- 
nomic power and to restrict business practices contrary to the 
public interest. This act was strengthened in 19S4. 

Industrialization occurred in a protected environment, 
which led to distortions that, after the mid-1960s, contributed 
to the sagging industrial growth rate. Tariffs and quantitative 
controls largely kept foreign competition out of the domestic 
market, and most Indian manufacturers looked on exports 
only as a residual possibility Industry paid insufficient atten- 
tion to the quality of products, technological development else- 
where, and economies of scale. Management was weak in many 
private and public plants. Shortfalls in reaching plan goals in 
public enterprises, moreover, denied the rest of the industrial 
sector key inputs, such as coal and electricity 

In the 1980s and earlv 1990s.. India began increasingly to 
remove some of the controls on industry Nevertheless, in the 
mid-1990s, there were state monopolies for most energy and 
communications production and services, and the state domi- 
nated the steel, nonferrous metal, machine tool, shipbuilding, 
chemical, fertilizer, paper, and coal industries. In FY 1992. pub- 
lic enterprises had a turnover of Rsl.7 trillion (see table 24, 
Appendix). Well over 50 percent of this total was accounted for 
bv ten enterprises, the most important of which were the oil, 



330 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

steel, and coal companies. Public enterprises in aggregate 
made a net profit after tax of 2.4 percent on capital in FY 1992, 
but the three oil companies earned 95 percent of these net 
profits. In fact, 106 of the 233 public companies sustained 
losses. Some analysts believed that the inefficiency of the public 
sector was concealed by passing on to consumers the high costs 
of monopoly products. 

Manufacturing 

Textiles 

Cotton textiles is a well-established manufacturing industry 
and employs more workers than any other sector. Production 
in FY 1992 was 19 billion square meters of cloth (see table 25, 
Appendix). In Indian textile mills, yarn is spun, woven into fab- 
rics, and processed under one roof. Production as a share of 
the manufacturing industry fell from 79 percent in 1951 to 
under 30 percent in the early 1990s as a result of curbs on 
capacity expansion and new equipment and differential excise 
duties. The main export market is Russia and other former 
Soviet republics. The power-loom sector forms the largest por- 
tion of the decentralized part of the textile industry. It 
expanded from 24,000 units in 1951 to 800,000 units in 1989. 
Power-loom fabric dominates India's garment export industry. 
There is also a substantial handloom sector, which provides 
employment in rural areas (see fig. 10). 

Steel and Aluminum 

After independence, successive governments placed great 
emphasis on the development of a steel industry. In FY 1991, 
the six major plants, of which five were in the public sector, 
produced 10 million tons. The rest of the steel production, 4.7 
million tons, came from 180 small plants, almost all of which 
were in the private sector. Steel production more than doubled 
during the 1980s but still did not meet demand in FY 1991, 
when 2.7 million tons were imported. In the mid-1990s, the 
government is seeking private-sector investment in new steel 
plants. Production is projected to increase substantially as the 
result of plans to set up a 1 million ton steel plant and three 
pig-iron plants totalling 600,000 tons capacity in West Bengal, 
with Chinese technical assistance and financial investment. 

The aluminum industry grew from 5,000 tons a year at inde- 
pendence to 483,000 tons in FY 1992, of which 113,000 tons 



331 



India: A Country Study 



were exported. Analysts believe the industry has a good 
long-term future because of India's abundant supply of baux- 
ite. 

Fertilizer and Petrochemicals 

The fertilizer industry is another major industrial sector. In 
FY 1991, production reached 7.4 million tons of nitrogen and 
2.6 million tons of phosphate. In the early 1990s, an increasing 
share of fertilizer production came from private-sector plants. 
Substantial imports were necessary in FY 1990, but the pros- 
pects for expansion of domestic production are good. 

In the early 1990s, the petrochemical industry was expand- 
ing rapidly. It produces a wide variety of thermoplastics, elas- 
tomers, synthetic fibers, and chemicals. Substantial imports, 
however, are required to meet domestic demand. Analysts fore- 
cast a major expansion in production during the 1990s. 

Electronics and Motor Vehicles 

The engineering sector is large and varied and provides 
around 12 percent of India's exports in the mid-1990s. Two 
subsectors, electronics and motor vehicles, are the most 
dynamic. 

Electronics companies benefited from the economic liberal- 
ization policies of the 1980s, including the loosening of restric- 
tions on technology and component imports, delicensing, 
foreign investment, and reduction of excise duties. Output 
from electronics plants grew from Rsl.8 billion in FY 1970 to 
Rs8.1 billion in FY 1980 and to Rsl23 billion in FY 1992. Most 
of the expansion took place in the production of computers 
and consumer electronics. 

Computer production rose from 7,500 units in 1985 to 
60,000 units in 1988 and to an estimated 200,000 units in 1992. 
During this period, major advances were made in the domestic 
computer industry that led to further sales. 

Consumer electronics account for about 30 percent of total 
electronics production. In FY 1990, production included 5 mil- 
lion television sets, 6 million radios, 5 million tape recorders, 5 
million electronic watches, and 140,000 video cassette record- 
ers. 

A similar expansion occurred in the motor vehicle industry. 
Until the 1980s, the government considered automobiles an 
unnecessary luxury and discouraged their production and use. 



332 



Cease-f^e ^e„_ 
* Srinagar 



Aksai Chin 

- Indian claim 
•Chinese line of control 




Shimla « 
Chandigarh • Q.Q 



Kand/a Gandhinagar / 

© Q 

Ahmadabad • Ml 
' #Wa/o/ 

Sa/aya " 



Gurgaon • f ^ 1 9 /Aon/a 
^/ 1^ Narora 

, x [Kanpur 

/ ! ©• 

/" ' 

® £^ 

Rawatbhata 



• S/iopa/ 




Bokarom Burr, 

® 3 
Jamshedpur^ 

Raurkela 
fta/pur © 




LACCADIVE 
ISLANDS 



Mangalore 



Ernakulam 
Q ft Koc/w 

Thiruvananthapuram 



® 


National c 


• 


Populatec 




Industr 




Aircraft pi, 


• 


Electronic 




Motor veh 


* 


Shipbuildi 




Steel plar 





150 3C 





150 



Figure 10. Major Industrial and Energy Activity, 1995 
334 




apital 




Oil pipeline 


i place 




Gas pipeline 


/ 




Energy 


ant 


Q 


Hydroelectric plant 


s plant 




Lubricant refinery 


icle plant 




Nuclear power plant 


ng 


i 


Oil refinery 


it 




Petrochemical plant 






Thermal power plant 



300 Miles 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

Production rose from 30,000 cars in FY 1980 to 181,000 cars in 
FY 1990. 

The largest company, Maruti, which is publicly owned, 
exports some automobiles to Eastern Europe and to France 
and became a net foreign-exchange earner in FY 1991. The 
production of other motor vehicles is also expanding. In FY 
1990, India produced 176,000 commercial vehicles, such as 
trucks and buses, and 1.8 million two-wheeled motor vehicles. 
Following the government's abolition of the manufacturing 
licensing system in March 1993, British, French, German, Ital- 
ian, and United States manufacturers and firms in the Repub- 
lic of Korea (South Korea) announced they would join 
Japanese and other South Korean companies already operating 
in India in joint-venture passenger car production in 1995. The 
growth of the Indian middle class sustains such industrial 
expansion and is forcing old-line domestic companies, such as 
Hindustan Motors, to become more competitive. 

Construction 

Construction contributes 5 to 6 percent of GDP and employs 
a similar proportion of the organized labor force plus large 
numbers of people in the informal sector. In the early 1990s, 
construction absorbed around 40 percent of public-sector plan 
outlays, and more than 1 million workers were engaged in pub- 
lic-sector construction projects. Indian firms also won many 
construction contracts in the Middle East during the 1980s and 
early 1990s. Most companies are small and lack access to mod- 
ern equipment. 

House building has not been a priority of the government, 
and a housing shortage persists in both urban and rural areas. 
Analysts believe that one-third of the population of big cities 
live in areas officially regarded as slums. 

Energy 

India produces nearly 90 percent of its energy requirements, 
65 percent of which are met by coal. Although commercial 
energy production has expanded substantially since indepen- 
dence, an inadequate supply of energy remains a constraint on 
industrial growth. Overall growth in the demand for energy 
was rapid in the early 1990s, but commercial energy consump- 
tion was among the lowest in the world. Much energy use in the 
subsistence sector, such as the use of firewood and cattle dung, 
is unrecorded. Analysts believe that the share of noncommer- 



335 



India: A Country Study 



rial energy fell from around 65 percent in the early 1950s to 23 
percent in 1991, and they expect this proportion to fall further 
during the 1990s. Most commercial energy production and dis- 
tribution are in the public sector, but in the mid-1990s, the gov- 
ernment was moving slowly to encourage the entry of private 
capital. 

Coal 

The coal industry is a key segment of the economy. Reserves 
are estimated at 192 billion tons, 78 billion tons of which are 
proven reserves. Additional coal exists in small seams, at great 
depths, and in undiscovered locations. The bulk of the coal 
found has been in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and West 
Bengal. Known reserves should last well into the twenty-first 
century. In the 1980s, development of strip mines was stressed 
over underground mines because of the speed with which they 
could be exploited. Most of the industry was nationalized in 
the early 1970s. Coal India Limited was established in 1975 as 
the government's holding company for several operating sub- 
sidiaries. Production stagnated in the second half of the 1970s 
at around 105 million tons after an initial surge in production 
following nationalization. In the late 1970s and throughout the 
1980s, the industry was plagued by the flooding of mines, seri- 
ous power outages, delays in commissioning new mines, labor 
unrest, lack of explosives, poor transportation, and environ- 
mental problems. Government-set coal prices did not cover 
operating expenses of the more technically difficult mines. 
The central government was the main source of investment 
funds. 

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, the coal industry — 
along with the electric power and transportation sectors — was a 
critical bottleneck in the economy and particularly handi- 
capped industrial growth. The Seventh Five-Year Plan (1985- 
89) set a target of 226 million tons for coal production in FY 
1989, but actual production reached only 214 million tons. Pro- 
duction rose to 241 million tons in FY 1991 and to 251 million 
tons in FY 1992. The annual demand for coal in the mid-1990s 
was around 320 million tons, a level that appeared to be out of 
reach without a significant leap in efficiency and large-scale 
investment. Subsurface mine fires in Bihar, some of which have 
been burning since 1916, have consumed some 37 million tons 
of coal and make another 2 billion tons inaccessible. 



336 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

Oil and Natural Gas 

India has significant amounts of oil and natural gas, and four 
of India's top six revenue-generating companies are in the oil 
and natural gas business. India has indigenous sources for 
around 60 percent of its oil needs and has worked diligently to 
use substitute forms of energy to fulfill the other 40 percent. 
Oil in commercial quantities was first discovered in Assam in 
1889. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission was established in 
1954 as a department of the Geological Survey of India, but a 
1959 act of Parliament made it, in effect, the country's national 
oil company. Oil India Limited, at one time one-third govern- 
ment owned, was also established in 1959 and developed an oil 
field that had been discovered by the Burmah Oil Company. By 
1981 the government had purchased all of the Burmah Oil 
Company's assets in India and completely owned Oil India 
Limited. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission discovered oil 
in Gujarat in 1959 and opened other fields in the 1960s and 
1970s. 

The early oil fields discovered in India were of modest size. 
Oil production amounted to 200,000 tons in 1950 and 400,000 
tons in 1960. By the early 1970s, production had increased to 
more than 8 million tons. In 1974 the Oil and Natural Gas 
Commission discovered a large field — called the Bombay 
High — offshore from Bombay. Production from that field was 
responsible for the rapid growth of the country's total crude oil 
production in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. In FY 
1989, oil production peaked at 34 million tons, of which Bom- 
bay High accounted for 22 million tons. In the early 1990s, 
wells were shut in offshore fields that had been inefficiently 
exploited, and production fell to 27 million tons in FY 1993. 
That amount did not meet India's needs, and 30.7 million tons 
of crude oil were imported in FY 1993. 

India has thirty-five major fields onshore (primarily in Assam 
and Gujarat) and four major offshore oil fields (near Bombay, 
south of Pondicherry, and in the Palk Strait). Of the 4,828 
wells, in 1990 2,514 were producing at a rate of 664,582 barrels 
per day. The oil field with the greatest output is Bombay High, 
with 402,797 barrels per day production in 1990, about fifteen 
times the amount produced by the next largest fields. Total 
reserves are estimated at 6.1 billion barrels. 

The government has sanctioned ambitious exploration 
plans to raise production in line with demand and to exploit 
new discoveries as rapidly as possible. In the late 1980s and 



337 



India: A Country Study 

early 1990s, there were encouraging finds in Tamil Nadu, 
Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, and Assam; many of these discoveries 
were made offshore. Officials estimated that by the mid-1990s 
these new fields could contribute as much as 15 million to 20 
million tons in new production and that total crude oil produc- 
tion could increase to 51 million tons in FY 1994. In the early 
1990s, the government renewed attempts, which had begun in 
the early 1980s, to interest foreign oil companies in purchasing 
exploration and production leases. These efforts drew only a 
modest response because the terms offered were difficult, and 
foreign companies remained suspicious of India's investment 
climate. One response, agreed on in January 1995, was an 
Indian-Kuwaiti joint venture to invest in a new oil refinery to be 
built on the east coast of India. 

Substantial quantities of natural gas are produced in associa- 
tion with crude oil production. Until the 1980s, most of this gas 
was flared off because there were no pipelines or processing 
facilities to bring it to customers. In the early 1980s, large 
investments were made to bring gases from Bombay High and 
other offshore fields ashore for use as fuel and to supply feed- 
stock to fertilizer and petrochemical plants, which also had to 
be constructed or converted to use gas. By the mid-1980s, natu- 
ral gas could be delivered to facilities near Bombay and near 
Kandla in Gujarat. In the mid-1990s, a 1,700-kilometer 
trans-India pipeline was being built; the pipeline will link the 
facilities near Bombay and Kandla to a series of gas-based fertil- 
izer plants and power stations. Officials envisage a grid system 
covering 11,500 kilometers by FY 2004, which will supply 120 
million cubic meters of gas a day. Total production in FY 1992 
was 18.1 billion cubic meters. 

India's need for oil and petroleum-based products — about 
40 million tons per year — far exceeded its domestic production 
capabilities of 28 million tons per year in the early 1990s. Given 
India's dependency on Persian Gulf resources, proposals were 
made in the early 1990s to develop natural gas pipelines from 
Iran, Qatar, and Oman that would run under the Arabian Sea 
to one or more west coast terminals. To assist with oil and natu- 
ral gas production, in 1992 the government decided to open 
reserves to private offshore developers. In February 1994, con- 
tracts were awarded for three offshore fields in the Arabian Sea 
to an Indian-United States consortium and one in the Bay of 
Bengal to an Indian-Australian-Japanese consortium. In June 



338 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

1995, an agreement was reached to set a joint-venture company 
to construct the first leg of the pipeline, from Iran to Pakistan. 

Electric Power 

The electric power industry is both a supplier and a con- 
sumer of primary energy, depending on the kind of energy 
used to turn the generators. Hydroelectric and nuclear power 
plants add to the country's supply of primary energy. The total 
installed electricity capacity in public utilities in 1992 was 
69,100 megawatts, of which 70 percent was thermal, 27 percent 
hydropower, and 3 percent nuclear. The total installed capacity 
was programmed to reach around 100,000 megawatts by FY 
1996 through a package of government-supported incentives 
to the private sector. 

Because they cannot always depend on public utilities, many 
larger industrial enterprises have developed their own power 
generation systems. In 1992 there was a capacity of 9,000 mega- 
watts outside the public utility system. Overall, the generation 
and transmission of power — with an average 57 percent plant 
load factor in FY 1992 in thermal plants and transmission losses 
of 22 percent — were inefficient. About 322 billion kilowatt- 
hours of power were generated by utilities in FY 1992, approxi- 
mately 8.5 percent shy of demand. The resulting deficit led to 
acute shortages in some states. This trend continued the next 
year when 315 billion kilowatt-hours were produced. Many fac- 
tors contributed to the shortfall of electric power, including 
slow completion of new installations, low use of installed capac- 
ity because of insufficient maintenance and coal, and poor 
management. In FY 1990, industry accounted for 45 percent of 
electricity consumed, agriculture 26 percent, and domestic use 
16.5 percent. Other sectors, including commerce and rail- 
roads, accounted for the remaining 12.5 percent. 

Rural electrification made great progress in the 1980s; more 
than 200,000 villages received electricity for the first time. In 
1990 around 84 percent of India's villages had access to elec- 
tricity. Most of the villages without electricity were in Bihar, 
Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. Villagers 
complain that government figures on electrification of villages 
are artificially inflated. Actually, although lines have been run 
to most villages, electricity is provided only sporadically (for 
example, only nine to twelve hours per day), and villagers feel 
they cannot depend on electricity to operate pumps and other 



339 



India: A Country Study 

equipment. Electricity to cities also is sporadic; blackouts occur 
every day in most cities. 

India's first hydroelectric station was constructed in 1897 in 
Darjiling (then Darjeeling). In FY 1990, installed capacity for 
hydroelectric power was 18,000 megawatts. The country has a 
large economically exploitable hydroelectric potential, espe- 
cially in the foothills of the Himalayas, but no large increase in 
capacity is predicted for the mid-1990s. Hydroelectric facilities 
have to be coordinated with other sources of electricity because 
seasonal and annual variations in rainfall affect the amount of 
water needed to turn the generators and consequently the 
amount of electricity that can be produced. 

Hydroelectric power projects have not been without contro- 
versy. Dams for irrigation and power generation have displaced 
people and raised the specter of ecological problems. 

Nuclear Power 

Nuclear-power developments are under the purview of the 
Nuclear Power Corporation of India, a government-owned 
entity under the Department of Atomic Energy. The corpora- 
tion is responsible for designing, constructing, and operating 
nuclear-power plants. In 1995 there were nine operational 
plants with a potential total capacity of 1,800 megawatts, about 
3 percent of India's total power generation. There are two units 
each in Tarapur, north of Bombay in Maharashtra; in Rawat- 
bhata in Rajasthan; in Kalpakkam near Madras in Tamil Nadu; 
and in Narora in Uttar Pradesh; and one unit in Kakrapur in 
southeastern Gujarat. However, of the nine plants, all have 
been faced with safety problems that have shut down reactors 
for periods ranging from months to years. The Rajasthan 
Atomic Power Station in Rawatbhata was closed indefinitely, as 
of February 1995. Moreover, environmental problems, caused 
by radiation leaks, have cropped up in communities near 
Rawatbhata. Other plants operate at only a fraction of their 
capacity, and some foreign experts consider them the most 
inefficient nuclear-power plants in the world. 

In addition to the nine established plants, seven reactors are 
under construction in the mid-1990s: one at Kakrapur and two 
each at Kaiga, on the coast of Karnataka, Rawatbhata, and Tara- 
pur, which, when finished, will bring an additional 2,320 mega- 
watts of energy online. Construction of ten additional reactors 
is in the planning stage for Kaiga, Rawatbhata, and Kudangu- 
lam in Tamil Nadu, which, when combined, will supply 4,800 



340 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

megawatts capacity. The overall plan is to increase nuclear-gen- 
eration capacity to 10,000 megawatts by FY 2000, but work has 
been slowed because of financial shortages. India partially over- 
came its shortage of enriched uranium— needed to fuel the 
Tarapur units— by imports from China, starting in 1995. 

Mining and Quarrying 

For a country of its size, India does not have a great deal of 
mineral wealth (see fig. 11). Mining accounted for less than 2 
percent of GDP in FY 1990. Nonetheless, iron and bauxite are 
found in sufficient quantities to base industries on their extrac- 
tion and processing. Assessment of the country's resources by 
the Geological Survey of India is still far from complete in the 
mid-1990s, and observers do not rule out the possibility of 
important new finds. 

In 1992 reserves of iron ore were estimated at among the 
world's largest — at 19.2 billion tons. Extraction capacity is 67 
million tons of ore per year, but only 53 million tons were pro- 
duced in FY 1992. About 60 percent of output is exported, 
mainly to the South Korea and Japan. The largest iron ore min- 
ing project is at Kudremukh, Chikmagalore District, Karnataka. 
India also has abundant bauxite, the main mineral source for 
aluminum. Reserves are estimated at about 2.7 billion tons, or 
8 percent of the world total. In FY 1991, 512,000 tons of alumi- 
num were produced, of which 61,000 tons were exported. Most 
bauxite mines are in Bihar and Karnataka. India is the world's 
third largest producer of manganese, and its mines extracted 
around 1.4 million tons of manganese ore per year in the early 
1990s from a total estimated reserve of 180 million tons. India 
also has significant reserves of copper, estimated at 422 million 
tons. However, the production of copper, at 46,000 tons in FY 
1991, fell well short of domestic demand. Most copper mines 
are in Bihar and Rajasthan. Smaller amounts of lead, zinc, and 
mica are also produced. 

Ownership and the power to grant mineral concessions gen- 
erally have rested with the state governments. The central gov- 
ernment, however, has exerted considerable influence over 
such leases, particularly in cases of important and strategic 
minerals. In fact, most mining of important and strategic min- 
erals is undertaken by central government enterprises in which 
states sometimes hold part ownership. In the early 1990s, ura- 
nium ore was mined, milled, and processed only in Bihar; rare 
earths — including mineral sands, monazite, ilmenite, rutile, 



341 



India: A Country Study 

zircon, rare earths chloride, and others — were mined in Tamil 
Nadu, Kerala, and Orissa. During this period, the central gov- 
ernment was attempting to increase the private sector's share 
of this industry. 

Transportation 

Transportation is a large and varied sector of the economy. 
Modes of conveyance for goods range from people's heads (on 
which loads are balanced) and bicycle rickshaws to trucks and 
railroad cars. The national railroad was the major freight 
hauler at independence, but road transport grew rapidly after 
1947. Both rail and road transport remain important. 

The share of transportation investments in total public 
investment declined during the period from the early 1950s to 
the early 1980s; real public transportation investment also 
declined during much of that period because of the need for 
funds in the rest of the economy. As a consequence, by the 
early 1980s the transportation system was barely meeting the 
needs of the nation or preparing for future economic growth. 
Many roads, for example, were breaking up because of overuse 
and lack of maintenance; railroads required new track and roll- 
ing stock. Ports needed equipment and facilities, particularly 
for bulk and container cargo; and at many airports the national 
civil airlines needed supporting equipment, including provi- 
sion for instrument landings. The government planned to 
devote 19 percent of the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1992-96) bud- 
get to transportation and communications, up from the 16 per- 
cent devoted to the sector during the seventh plan. 

Although there is a large private-sector involvement in trans- 
portation, government plays a large regulatory and develop- 
mental role. The central government has ministries to handle 
civil aviation, railroads, and surface transportation. Counter- 
part agencies are found at the state and union territory level. 
Critical to improving the entire transportation sector in the 
late 1990s is the ability of the sector to adjust to the central gov- 
ernment's national reform initiatives, including privatization, 
deregulation, and reduced subsidies. The sector must also 
adjust to foreign trade expansion, demographic pressures and 
increasing urbanization, technological change and obsoles- 
cence, energy availability, and environmental and public safety 
concerns. 



342 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

Railroads 

India's railroad system is the government's largest public 
enterprise (see fig. 12). Its route length extends 62,458 kilome- 
ters. The railroads of India are the fourth most heavily used sys- 
tem in the world, which suggests the large investment made in 
rail transportation. In the mid-1990s, the railroad system 
employed 1.7 million people and carried around 66 percent of 
India's goods traffic (some 350 million tons in FY 1992) and 40 
percent of passenger traffic (3.7 billion passenger journeys in 
FY 1992). 

Indian Railways is administered and managed by the Railway 
Board, which is subordinate to the Ministry of Railways. The 
minister of railways is assisted by the minister of state for rail- 
ways. Indian Railways is Asia's largest railroad system and the 
second largest state-owned system under a single management 
in the world. The 62,458 kilometers of route-length track run 
in three gauges: narrow gauge (610 and 762 millimeters), 
meter gauge (1,000 millimeters), and broad gauge (1,676 milli- 
meters). Around 17 percent, or about 11,000 kilometers, of all 
gauges is electrified, and about 27 percent, or 10,859 kilome- 
ters, of the broad-gauge track is electrified. Some 14,600 kilo- 
meters are double or multiple tracked. As of FY 1991, there 
were some 116,000 railroad bridges and some 7,100 railroad 
stations. 

The railroad system is divided into nine zones: central, east- 
ern, northern, northeastern, northeast frontier, southern, 
south-central, southeastern, and western. As of FY 1993, Indian 
Railways had 1,725 steam, 4,069 diesel, and 2,012 electric loco- 
motives; 3,444 electric multiple-unit coaches; 30,298 conven- 
tional passenger coaches; 6,163 other passenger cars 
(including luggage and mail cars in which passengers some- 
times travel); and 337,562 freight cars of all kinds. 

The Eighth Five- Year Plan provided for a Rs45 trillion invest- 
ment in railroad development. Priority was to be given to track 
and roadbed renovation, additional electrification, conversion 
of high-use meter-gauge lines to broad-gauge track, the 
replacement of all steam locomotives, and improved signalling 
and telecommunications. By 1992, however, the funds actually 
approved by the government were only 80 percent of the 
eighth plan's amount, and only 42 percent would be covered by 
the central government budget. Indian Railways was expected 
to come up with the balance. Thus, in FY 1994, the outlay was 
set at Rs65.1 billion; Rsll.5 billion was to come from central 



345 




344 



India: A Country Study 



government revenues, Rs43.1 billion from internal railroad 
resources, and Rsl0.5 billion from loans. Some of the invest- 
ment funds, as in the past, were expected from the World 
Bank. The only way to cover these outlays with such low budget- 
ary support was with drastic increases in fares and rates in pas- 
senger service. In FY 1993, Indian Railways made capital 
expenditures amounting to US$2 billion for items such as new 
rolling stock, new line construction, track renewal, and electri- 
fication. 

An example of the scale of new rail line construction is the 
new broad-gauge high-speed Konkan Railway, a 760-kilometer 
coastal connection between Bombay and Mangalore featuring 
fifty-five stations, seventy-three tunnels, 143 major bridges, and 
some 1,670 minor bridges. The line crosses several mountain 
ranges and runs some 380 kilometers through an earthquake- 
prone zone. Besides opening up an all-weather transportation 
infrastructure between two important cities, it cuts the distance 
by rail between them by 1,127 circuitous kilometers. 

India has a major railroad-equipment production industry. 
Although some state-of-the-art electrical components and 
equipment are imported, India is developing sufficient indus- 
trial capacity to meet most of its standard locomotive and pas- 
senger-car and ancillary equipment needs and has made plans 
to export locomotives. The Research, Design, and Standards 
Organisation of Indian Railways engages in research and simu- 
lations aimed at further improving the quality of domestic 
achievements, which have included high-speed passenger 
trains (up to 140 kilometers per hour) and freight trains (up to 
80 kilometers per hour) and solid-state signalling equipment. 
Because some two-thirds of the nation's freight is carried by 
train, there is a serious freight car shortage. To overcome this 
and other industry-related rail transportation problems, Indian 
Railways envisions having to import up to 5,000 freight cars a 
year. 

Rapid Transit 

India also has two rapid-rail systems and a third in the plan- 
ning stage. The most advanced is the world-class metro system 
in Calcutta that opened in 1984 and carried 50,000 passengers 
daily in 1992-93. It uses Indian-made subway cars that run on 
the initial ten kilometers of what will be a 16.5 kilometer-long, 
seventeen-station (eleven stations were in service in 1995) 
route scheduled for completion in 1995. Plans for more than 



346 




Figure 12. Transportation System, 1995 
348 








International boundary 
International boundary in dispute 
National capital 
Populated place 
Major railroad 
National highway 
Major airport 
Major port 

150 300 Kilometers 



150 



300 Miles 




C.BANGLADESH , 

) Agartala ^AizawiL 



V BURMA 

>0 ■ 




/ of 'Bengal 



ANDAMAN °n 
ISLANDS 
(India) 

Q 



Port Blair 



Andaman 
Sea 



NtCOBAR 
ISLANDS °Q 
(India) 



citation 
■'thoritative 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

sixty additional kilometers are on the books. Calcutta is also 
served by a seventy-seven-kilometer-long tramway network, 
which is to be phased out because of large annual losses despite 
a government subsidy. In 1992 Calcutta Tramways started run- 
ning more reliable buses on some routes. 

Rapid transit systems are also in operation or being planned 
for Madras and New Delhi. The Madras system opened 8.5 kilo- 
meters — of a planned 21.7 kilometers — of single-track service 
in 1991, using broad-gauge Indian Railways electric multiple- 
unit vehicles. When completed in 2011, the New Delhi system, 
in the planning stages since the late 1980s, will include some 
220 kilometers of underground and elevated track and a light- 
rail system of 300 kilometers. In 1994 the Ministry of State for 
Surface Transport tendered bids for the first phase, a 167-kilo- 
meter elevated high-speed tram system to operate on nine cor- 
ridors throughout the National Capital Territory of Delhi. 
Bombay is served by a suburban rail network that began opera- 
tion in 1992. 

The Road System 

India has nearly 2 million kilometers of roads: 960,000 kilo- 
meters of surfaced roads and more than 1 million kilometers of 
roads constructed of gravel, crushed stone, or earth. Fifty-three 
highways, just under 20,000 kilometers in total length, are 
rated as national highways, but they carry about 40 percent of 
the road traffic. To improve road transportation, significant 
efforts were begun in the 1980s to build roads to link major 
highways, to widen existing roads from single to double lanes, 
and to construct major bridges. 

These road-building achievements represent an impressive 
expansion from the 1950 total of 400,000 kilometers of roads 
of all kinds, but more than 25 percent of villages still have no 
road link, and about 60 percent have no all-weather road link. 
These statistics, however, mask important regional variations. 
Almost all villages in Kerala, Haryana, and Punjab are served 
by all-weather roads. By contrast, only 15 percent of villages in 
Orissa and 21 percent in Rajasthan are connected with all- 
weather roads. The quality of roads, including major highways, 
is poor by international standards. Nonetheless, roads carry 
about 60 percent of all passenger traffic. 

The central and state governments share responsibilities for 
road building and maintaining roads and for some transporta- 
tion companies. The Ministry of State for Surface Transport 



349 




Figure 12. Transportation System, 1995 
348 



India: A Country Study 



administers the national highway system, and state highways 
and other state roads are maintained by state public works 
departments. Minor roads are maintained by municipalities, 
districts, and villages. Still other roads, about 22,000 kilometers 
in total in 1991, are under the jurisdiction of the Border Roads 
Development Board, a central government organization estab- 
lished in 1960 to facilitate economic development and defense 
preparedness, especially in the north and northeast. 

Motor Vehicles 

The number of registered vehicles increased from 300,000 
in FY 1950 to 5.2 million in FY 1980 and 23.4 million in FY 
1991. India now has more than 375,000 buses and 800,000 
trucks. About 40 percent of bus transport is in the public sec- 
tor. Major urban bus lines are found in cities such as Bombay, 
Calcutta, New Delhi, Madras, and other major urban agglomer- 
ates. Bombay, India's largest city, for example, had some 3,000 
buses running on 339 routes and carrying 1.6 billion passen- 
gers per year in FY 1992. The National Capital Territory of 
Delhi, with more than 3,800 buses and 870 routes, carried 
nearly 1.4 billion passengers in that year, and the Madras bus 
system, with some 2,300 vehicles and 428 routes, carried 
around 1.3 billion passengers. Because it has a subway system in 
place, Calcutta's bus service is considerably smaller. Calcutta 
had 1,200 buses and 202 routes and carried 308 million passen- 
gers per year in FY 1992. There are also unregulated bus ser- 
vices in some cities as well as extensive suburban and 
interurban and rural bus services. 

Truck transportation is largely in private hands. Two-wheel 
and three-wheel vehicles also play a major role in hauling pas- 
sengers and freight. Emissions control is very low by interna- 
tional standards, and fumes from motor vehicles contribute 
mightily to India's air pollution. New Delhi ranks among the 
ten most polluted cities in the world, according to the World 
Health Organization. Automotive traffic causes much of the 
pollution. 

Ports, Maritime Transportation, and Inland Waterways 

India has eleven major seaports: Kandla, Bombay, Nhava 
Sheva, Marmagao, New Mangalore, and Kochi (formerly 
known as Cochin) on the west coast, and Calcutta-Haldia, Para- 
dip, Vishakhapatnam, Madras, and Tuticorin on the east coast. 
The port at Nhava Sheva, located across the harbor from Bom- 



350 



Passenger train arriving in New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

bay Port, was established in 1982 under the administration of 
the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust as a separate port rather than 
an adjunct to Bombay. The eleven ports are the responsibility 
of the Ministry of State for Surface Transport but are managed 
by semi-independent port trusts overseen by boards appointed 
by the ministry from government departments, including the 
navy, port labor and industry, and ship owners and shipping 
companies. 

In order of gross weight tonnage conveyed annually, Bom- 
bay, Vishakhapatnam, Madras, and Marmagao are the most 
important ports. In addition, there are some 139 minor work- 
ing ports along the two coasts and on offshore islands adminis- 
tered by local, state, or union territory maritime 
administrations. Total traffic at the eleven major ports 
increased from 107 million tons in FY 1984 to 179 million tons 
in FY 1993. In FY 1993, some US$250 million in profits were 
earned, an achievement that attracted some US$4.5 billion in 
foreign investments in the ports in FY1992-FY1993. 

In 1995 there were three government-owned shipping cor- 
porations, the most important of which was the Shipping Cor- 
poration of India. There were also between fifty and sixty 
private companies operating a total of 443 vessels amounting to 



351 



India: A Country Study 



6.3 million gross registered tons, more than 300 of which were 
1,000 gross registered tons or more. Indian tonnage repre- 
sented 1.7 percent of the world total. Overall, the share of 
Indian vessels in total Indian trade is around 35 percent. 
Approximately 40 to 50 percent of capacity is underused. As a 
result of the global slump of the late 1980s, shipping compa- 
nies experienced financial difficulties; the leading private ship- 
ping company, Scindia Steam Navigation Company, collapsed 
in 19S7. The collapse left most Indian shipping under public 
ownership. The government's director general of shipping pro- 
vides oversight for all aspects of shipping. 

India has four major and three medium-sized shipyards, all 
government run. The Cochin Shipyards in Kochi, Hindustan 
Shipyard in Vishakhapatnam, and Hooghly Dock and Port 
Engineers in Calcutta are the most important shipbuilding 
enterprises in India. Thirn-five smaller shipvards are in the pri- 
vate sector. Drydocks at Kochi and Vishakhapatnam accommo- 
date the nation's major ship repair needs. 

In addition to its coastal and ocean trade routes, India has 
more than 16,000 kilometers of inland waterways. Of that num- 
ber, more than 3,600 kilometers are navigable by large vessels, 
although in practice only about 2,000 kilometers are used. 
Inland waters are regulated by the Inland Waterways Authority 
of India, which was established in 1986 to develop, maintain, 
and regulate the nation's waterways and to advise the central 
and state governments on inland waterway development. 

Civil Aviation 

Air transportation is under the purview of the Department 
of Civil Aviation, a part of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and 
Tourism. In 1995 the government owned two airlines and one 
helicopter service, and private companies owned six airlines. 

The government-owned airlines dominated India's air trans- 
portation in the mid-1990s. Air India is the international car- 
rier: it carried more than 2.2 million passengers in FY 1992. 
Indian Airlines is the major domestic carrier and also runs 
international flights to nearby countries. It carried 9.8 million 
passengers in FY 1989, when it had a load factor of more than 
80 percent in its fifty-nine airplanes. Analysts, however, attrib- 
uted this high load factor to a shortage of capacity rather than 
efficiency of operation. A major expansion was planned for the 
1990s, but an airplane crash in 1990 and a pilots' strike in 1991 
damaged the airline, which carried only 7.8 million passengers 



352 



A bus in rural Raj asthan 
Courtesy Janice Hyde 
Semi-articulated double-decker bus, Bangalore, Karnataka 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



353 



India: A Country Study 

in FY 1992. Two other accidents in 1993, plus several hijack- 
ings, put constraints on the growth of both airlines. 

A third government-owned airline, Vayudoot, was also a 
domestic carrier in the early 1990s. It provided feeder service 
between smaller cities and the larger places served by Air India 
and Indian Airlines. By 1994 Indian Airlines had taken over 
Vayudoot. Another publicly owned company, Pawan Hans, runs 
helicopter service, mostly to offshore locations and other areas 
that cannot be served by fixed-wing aircraft. 

In 1995 India's six private airlines accounted for more than 
10 percent of domestic air traffic. Both the number of carriers 
and their market share are expected to rise in the mid-1990s. 
The four major private airlines are East West Airlines, Jagsons 
Airlines, Continental Aviation, and Damania Airways. 

In addition to the Indian-owned airlines, many foreign air- 
lines provide international service. In 1995 forty-two airlines 
operated air services to, from, and through India. 

In the mid-1990s, India had 288 usable airports. Of these, 
208 had permanent-surface runways and two had runways of 
more than 3,659 meters, fifty-nine had runways of between 
2,400 and 3,659 meters, and ninety-two had runways between 
1,200 and 2,439 meters. There are major international airports 
at Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, and Thiruvananthapuram 
(Trivandrum), under the management of the International 
Airport Authority of India. International service also operates 
from Marmagao, Bangalore, and Hyderabad. A consortium of 
Indian and British companies signed a memorandum of under- 
standing with the state government of Maharashtra in June 
1995 to build a new international airport for Bombay, across 
the harbor from the main city and to be linked by a cross-har- 
bor roadway. Major regional airports are located at Ahmada- 
bad, Allahabad, Pune, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Kochi, and 
Nagpur. 

Telecommunications 

National Policy 

In 1994 the government issued its National Telecommunica- 
tions Policy. The policy was issued in recognition of the "urgent 
need" to provide universal access to basic telecommunications 
services by 1997 and offers guidelines for entry of the private 
sector into basic telecommunications services. To facilitate pri- 
vate-sector participation, licensing procedures were established 



354 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

in the Department of Telecommunications, and equity partici- 
pation for companies registered in India (with 51 or more per- 
cent Indian ownership) was anticipated. Private-sector licenses, 
however, were to be granted only for local (versus long-dis- 
tance) telecommunications networks. An autonomous body, 
the Telecommunications Authority of India, was established to 
regulate private-sector activity. 

Telephone 

The telephone system, like many other aspects of telecom- 
munications, is in the government sector, under the control of 
the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The moderniza- 
tion of the telephone system has been underway since 1986 
when Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, a government corpora- 
tion, was established to operate systems in Bombay and New 
Delhi, and Videsh Sanchar Nigam, also government owned, 
was set up as the overseas carrier. Progress was slow, however; 
the rest of the nation's service continued as a civil-service-run 
operation under the Department of Telecommunications until 
1994 when basic telephone services were opened to private-sec- 
tor competition. 

The number of telephone connections rose from 800,000 in 
FY 1968 to 8 million in FY 1994. The system remains substan- 
dard by international standards, however, and there is a waiting 
list for connections of 2.8 million people. Sometimes several 
years elapse between application and installation of a tele- 
phone line. Close to 1 million new connections a year are 
being established in the mid-1990s. Plans for increasing the 
capacity of the system to handle more directly dialed calls were 
being implemented in the early 1990s, and 20 million lines 
should be in operation by FY 2000. This number is very low for 
a population that by then will probably exceed 1 billion. Tele- 
phone line density was less than 0.7 per 100 persons in 1994, 
one of the lowest densities among the major nations of Asia. 

There also are submarine telecommunications cables link- 
ing India with Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. 
Although the government is a major manufacturer of tele- 
phone equipment, the private sector — especially foreign ven- 
tures — is becoming increasingly involved in manufacturing in 
the mid-1990s and paging, cellular phone service, and elec- 
tronic mail are being introduced. 



355 



India: A Country Study 



Radio 

Radio broadcasting is a government monopoly under the 
Directorate General of All India Radio — established in 1936 
and since 1957 also known as Akashvani — a government- 
owned, semicommercial operation of the Ministry of Informa- 
tion and Broadcasting. From only six stations at the time of 
independence, All India Radio's network had expanded by the 
mid-1990s to 146 AM stations plus a National Channel, the 
Integrated North-East Service (aimed at tribal groups in north- 
east India), and the External Service. There are five regional 
headquarters for All India Radio: the North Zone in New 
Delhi; the North-East Zone in Guwahati, Assam; the East Zone 
in Calcutta; the West Zone in Bombay; and the South Zone in 
Madras. 

The government-owned network provides both national and 
local programs in Hindi, English, and sixteen regional lan- 
guages. Commercial services, which were inaugurated in 1967, 
are provided by Vividh Bharati Service, headquartered in Bom- 
bay. Vividh Bharati, which accepts advertisements, broadcasts 
from thirty-one AM and FM stations in the mid-1990s. 

India has an extensive network of mediumwave and short- 
wave stations. In 1994 there were eighty-five FM stations and 
seventy-three shortwave stations that covered the entire coun- 
try. The broadcasting equipment is mostly Indian made and 
reaches special audiences, such as farmers needing agrocli- 
matic, plant protection, and other agriculture-related informa- 
tion. The number of radio receivers increased almost fivefold 
between 1970 and 1994, from around 14 million to nearly 65 
million. Most radios are also produced within India. 

The foreign broadcast service is a function of the External 
Services Division of All India Radio. In 1994 seventy hours of 
news, features, and entertainment programs were broadcast 
daily in twenty-five languages using thirty-two shortwave trans- 
mitters. The principal target audiences are listeners in neigh- 
boring countries and the large overseas Indian community. 

Television 

Television service is available throughout the country. 
Broadcasting is a central government monopoly under the 
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, but the only net- 
work system, Doordarshan, also known as TV1, accepts adver- 
tisements for some programs. Doordarshan, established in 



356 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

1959 and a part of All India Radio until 1976, consists of one 
national network and seven regional networks. In 1992 there 
were sixty-three high-power television transmitters, 369 
medium-power transmitters, seventy-six low-power transmitters, 
and twenty-three transposers. Regular satellite transmissions 
began in 1982 (the same year color transmission began). 

By 1994 some 6 million people were receiving television 
broadcasts via satellite, and the number was expected to 
increase rapidly throughout the rest of the decade. Cable tele- 
vision was even more prolific, with an estimated 12 to 15 mil- 
lion subscribers in 1994. Besides Doordarshan, Zee TV — an 
independent station broadcasting from Bombay since 1992 — 
uses satellite transmissions. In fact, because Doordarshan is the 
only network that is permitted to broadcast television signals 
domestically, Zee TV and other entrepreneurs broadcast their 
Indian-made videotapes via foreign transmitters. Other net- 
works joining the fray are Cable News Network (CNN — starting 
in 1990); Asia Television Network (1991); Hong Kong-based 
Star TV (1991); Jain TV, near Bombay (1994); EL TV, a spinoff 
of Zee TV in Bombay (1994); HTV, an affiliate of the Hindustan 
Times in New Delhi (1994); and Sun TV, a Tamil-language ser- 
vice in Madras (1994) (see Broadcast Media, ch. 8). In a com- 
munications breakthrough in July 1995, Doordarshan agreed, 
for a US$1.5 million annual fee and 50 percent of advertising 
revenue when it exceeds US$1.5 million, to allow CNN to 
broadcast twenty-four hours a day via an Indian satellite. 

Doordarshan offers national, regional, and local service. 
The number of television sets increased from around 500,000 
in 1976 to 9 million in early 1987 and to around 47 million in 
1994; increases are expected to continue at around 6 million 
sets per year. More than 75 percent of television sets were black 
and white models in 1992, but the proportion of color sets is 
increasing annually. Most television sets are produced in India. 

Tourism 

Tourism has not been a government priority, but it nonethe- 
less provides around 6 percent of foreign-exchange earnings. 
The total number of visitors to India was estimated at nearly 1.8 
million in FY 1992. The Eighth Five-Year Plan estimated an 
annual increase of 6 to 7 percent in visitor arrivals; tourists 
from Europe and North America were targeted. In the mid- 
1990s, the government offered special tax incentives to the 
industry to help alleviate a shortage of hotel rooms. Estimated 



357 



India: A Country Study 

gross export earnings from tourism were Rs24 billion and net 
earnings Rsl7 billion, making the industry an important for- 
eign-exchange earner. With under 0.3 percent of the world's 
tourists and around 1 percent of world tourism spending, 
India, however, has barely tapped its tourism potential. 

Science and Technology 

Origin and Development 

Indian scientific research and technological developments 
since independence in 1947 have received substantial political 
support and most of their funding from the government. Sci- 
ence and technology initiatives have been important aspects of 
the government's five-year plans and usually are based on ful- 
filling short-term needs, while aiming to provide the institu- 
tional base needed to achieve long-term goals. As India has 
striven to develop leading scientists and world-class research 
institutes, government-sponsored scientific and technical 
developments have aided diverse areas such as agriculture, bio- 
technology, cold regions research, communications, environ- 
ment, industry, mining, nuclear power, space, and 
transportation. As a result, India has experts in such fields as 
astronomy and astrophysics, liquid crystals, condensed matter 
physics, molecular biology, virology, and crystallography. 
Observers have pointed out, however, that India's emphasis on 
basic and theoretical research rather than on applied research 
and technical applications has diminished the social and eco- 
nomic effects of the government's investments. In the mid- 
1990s, government funds supported nearly 80 percent of 
India's research and development activities, but, as elsewhere 
in the economic sector, emphasis increasingly was being put on 
independent, nongovernmental sources of support (see Liber- 
alization in the Early 1990s; Resource Allocation, this ch.). 

India has a long and proud scientific tradition. Nehru, in his 
Discovery of India published in 1946, praised the mathematical 
achievements of Indian scholars, who are said to have devel- 
oped geometric theorems before Pythagoras did in the sixth 
century B.C. and were using advanced methods of determining 
the number of mathematical combinations by the second cen- 
tury B.C. By the fifth century A.D., Indian mathematicians 
were using ten numerals and by the seventh century were treat- 
ing zero as a number. These breakthroughs, Nehru said, "liber- 
ated the human mind . . . and threw a flood of light on the 



358 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

behavior of numbers." The conceptualization of squares, rect- 
angles, circles, triangles, fractions, the ability to express the 
number ten to the twelfth power, algebraic formulas, and 
astronomy had even more ancient origins in Vedic literature, 
some of which was compiled as early as 1500 B.C. The concepts 
of astronomy, metaphysics, and perennial movement are all 
embodied in the Rig Veda (see The Vedas and Polytheism, ch. 
3). Although such abstract concepts were further developed by 
the ancient Greeks and the Indian numeral system was popu- 
larized in the first millennium A.D. by the Arabs (the Arabic 
word for number, Nehru pointed out, is hindsah, meaning 
"from Hind (India)"), their Indian origins are a source of 
national pride. 

Technological discoveries have been made relating to phar- 
macology, brain surgery, medicine, artificial colors and glazes, 
metallurgy, recrystalization, chemistry, the decimal system, 
geometry, astronomy, and language and linguistics (systematic 
linguistic analysis having originated in India with Panini's 
fourth-century B.C. Sanskrit grammar, the Ashtadhyayi) . These 
discoveries have led to practical applications in brick and pot- 
tery making, metal casting, distillation, surveying, town plan- 
ning, hydraulics, the development of a lunar calendar, and the 
means of recording these discoveries as early as the era of 
Harappan culture (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.; see Harappan Culture, 
ch. 1). 

Written information on scientific developments from the 
Harrapan period to the eleventh century A.D. (when the first 
permanent Muslim settlements were established in India) is 
found in Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, Malayalam, and 
other classical languages that were intimately connected to 
Indian religious and philosophical traditions. Archaeological 
evidence and written accounts from other cultures with which 
India has had contact have also been used to corroborate the 
evidence of Indian scientific and technological developments. 
The technology of textile production, hydraulic engineering, 
water-powered devices, medicine, and other innovations, as 
well as mathematics and other theoretical sciences, continued 
to develop and be influenced by techniques brought in from 
the Muslim world by the Mughals after the fifteenth century. 

The practical applications of scientific and technical devel- 
opments are witnessed, for example, by the proliferation of 
hundreds of thousands of water tanks for irrigation in South 
India by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although 



359 



India: A Countn Studx 



each tank was built through local efforts, together, in effect, 
they created a closely integrated network supplying water 
throughout the region. The science of metallurgy led to the 
construction of numerous small but sophisticated furnaces for 
producing; iron and steel. By the late eighteenth century, it is 
estimated that production capability may have reached 200.000 
tons per year. High leyels of textile production — making India 
the world's leading producer and exporter of textiles before 
1800 — were the result of refinements in spinning technology. 

Several millennia of interest in astronomy in India eyentuallv 
resulted in the invention and construction of a network of 
sophisticated, large-scale astronomical obseryatories — the Jan- 
tar Mantars (meaning "house of instruments" ) — in the early 
eighteenth century Constructed of stone, brick, stucco, and 
marble, the Jantar Mantar complexes were used to determine 
the seasons, phases of the moon and sun. and locations of stars 
and planets from points in Delhi. Mathura. Jaipur. Yaranasi. 
and Ujjain. The Jantar Mantars were designed and built by a 
renowned astronomer and city planner. Sawaijai Singh II. the 
Hindu maharajah of Amber, between 1725 and 1734. after he 
been asked by Mohammad Shah, the tenth Mughal emperor, 
to reform the calendar. These complexes had the patronage of 
the Mughal emperors and haye long attracted the attention of 
Western scholars and trayelers. some of whom haye found 
them anachronistic in light of the use of telescopes in Europe 
and China more than a century before Jai Singh's projects. As 
United States scientist William A. Blanpied has pointed out. Jai 
Singh, who subscribed to Hindu cosmology, was aware of West- 
ern developments but preferred to perfect his naked-eye obser- 
vations rather than concentrate on precise calculational 
astro no my. 

The arrival of the British in India in the early seyenteenth 
century — the Portuguese. Dutch, and French also had a pres- 
ence, although it was much less pervasive — led eyentually to 
new scientific deyelopments that added to the indigenous 
achieyements of the previous millennia (see The Coming of 
the Europeans, ch. 1 >. Although colonization subverted much 
of Indian culture, turning the region into a source of raw mate- 
rials for the factories of England and France and leaving only 
low-technology production to local entrepreneurs, a new orga- 
nization was brought to science in the form of the British edu- 
cation system. Science education under British rule (by the 
East India Company from 1757 to 1S57 and by the British gov- 



360 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

ernment from 1858 to 1947) initially involved only rudimen- 
tary mathematics, but as greater exploitation of India took 
place, there was more need for surveying and medical schools 
to train indigenous people to assist Europeans in their explora- 
tions and research. What new technologies were implemented 
were imported rather than developed indigenously, however, 
and it was only during the immediate preindependence period 
that Indian scientists came to enjoy political patronage and 
support for their work (see The Independence Movement, ch. 

i). 

Western education and techniques of scientific inquiry were 
added to the already established Indian base, making way for 
later developments. The major result of these developments 
was the establishment of a large and sophisticated educational 
infrastructure that placed India as the leader in science and 
technology in Asia at the time of independence in 1947. There- 
after, as other Asian nations emerged, India lost its primacy in 
science, a situation much lamented by India's leaders and sci- 
entists. However, the infrastructure was in place and has con- 
tinued to produce generations of top scientists. 

One of the most famous scientists of the pre- and postinde- 
pendence era was Indian-trained Chandrasekhara Venkata 
(C.V.) Raman, an ardent nationalist, prolific researcher, and 
writer of scientific treatises on the molecular scattering of light 
and other subjects of quantum mechanics. In 1930 Raman was 
awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his 1928 discovery of 
the Raman Effect, which demonstrates that the energy of a 
photon can undergo partial transformation within matter. In 
1934-36, with his colleague Nagendra Nath, Raman pro- 
pounded the Raman-Nath Theory on the diffraction of light by 
ultrasonic waves. He was a director of the Indian Institute of 
Science and founded the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1934 
and the Raman Research Institute in 1948. 

Another leading scientist was Homi Jehangir Bhabha, an 
eminent physicist internationally recognized for his contribu- 
tions to the fields of positron theory, cosmic rays, and muon 
physics at the University of Cambridge in Britain. In 1945, with 
financial assistance from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Bhabha 
established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 
Bombay (see Major Research Organizations, this ch.). 

Other eminent preindependence scientists include Sir Jaga- 
dish Chandra (J.C.) Bose, a Cambridge-educated Bengali phys- 
icist who discovered the application of electromagnetic waves 



361 



India: A Country Study 

to wireless telegraphy in 1895 and then went on to a second 
notable career in biophysical research. Meghnad Saha, also 
from Bengal, was trained in India, Britain, and Germany and 
became an internationally recognized nuclear physicist whose 
mathematical equations and ionization theory gave new insight 
into the functions of stellar spectra. In the late 1930s, Saha 
began promoting the importance of science to national eco- 
nomic modernization, a concept fully embraced by Nehru and 
several generations of government planners. The Bose-Einstein 
Statistics, used in quantum physics, and Boson particles are 
named after another leading scientist, mathematician Satyen- 
dranath (S.N.) Bose. S.N. Bose was trained in India, and his 
research discoveries gave him international fame and an 
opportunity for advanced studies in France and Germany. In 
1924 he sent the results of his research on radiation as a form 
of gas to Albert Einstein. Einstein extended Bose's statistical 
methods to ordinary atoms, which led him to predict a new 
state of matter — called the Bose-Einstein Condensation — that 
was scientifically proved in United States laboratory experi- 
ments in 1995. Prafulla Chandra Ray, another Bengali, earned 
a doctorate in inorganic chemistry from the University of Edin- 
burgh in 1887 and went on to a devoted career of teaching and 
research. His work was instrumental in establishing the chemi- 
cal industry in Bengal in the early twentieth century. 

At the onset of independence, Nehru called science "the 
very texture of life" and optimistically declared that "science 
alone . . . can solve problems of hunger and poverty, of insani- 
tation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening customs." 
Under his leadership, the government set out to cure numer- 
ous societal problems. The Green Revolution, educational 
improvement, establishment of hundreds of scientific laborato- 
ries, industrial and military research, massive hydraulic 
projects, and entry into the frontiers of space all evolved from 
this early decision to embrace high technology (see The Green 
Revolution, ch. 7). 

One of the early planning documents was the Scientific Pol- 
icy Resolution of 1958, which called for embracing "by all 
appropriate means, the cultivation of science and scientific 
research in all its aspects — pure, applied, and educational" and 
encouraged individual initiatives. In 1983 the government 
issued a similar statement, which, while stressing the impor- 
tance of international cooperation and the diffusion of scien- 
tific knowledge, put considerable emphasis on self-reliance and 



362 



Part of the eighteenth-century Jantar Mantar observatory, New Delhi 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

the development of indigenous technology. This goal is still in 
place in the mid-1990s. 

Infrastructure and Government Role 

Science and technology policy and research have largely 
been the domains of government since 1947 and are largely 
patterned after the structure left behind by the British. Within 
the central government, there are a top-down apparatus and a 
plethora of ministries, departments, lower-level agencies, and 
institutions involved in the science and technology infrastruc- 
ture. 

Government-administered science and technology emanate 
from the Office of the Prime Minister, to which a chief science 
adviser and the Science Advisory Council, when they are 
appointed, have direct input. The prime minister de jure con- 
trols the science and technology sector through the National 
Council on Science and Technology, the minister of state for 
science and technology (who has control over day-to-day opera- 
tions of the science and technology infrastructure), and minis- 
ters responsible for ocean development, atomic energy, 
electronics, and space. Other ministries and departments also 
have significant science and technology components and 



363 



India: A Country Study 



answer to the prime minister through their respective minis- 
ters. Among them are agriculture, chemicals and fertilizers, 
civil aviation and tourism, coal, defence, environment, food, 
civil supplies, forests and wildlife, health and family welfare, 
home affairs, human resource development, nonconventional 
energy sources, petrochemicals, and petroleum and natural 
gas, as well as other governmental entities. 

The Ministry of Science and Technology was established in 
1971 to formulate science and technology policies and imple- 
ment, identify, and promote "frontline" research throughout 
the science and technology infrastructure. The ministry, 
through its subordinate Department of Science and Technol- 
ogy, also coordinates intragovernmental and international 
cooperation and provides funding for domestic institutions 
and research programs. The Department of Scientific and 
Industrial Research, a technology transfer organization, and 
the Department of Biotechnology, which runs a number of 
developmental laboratories, are the ministry's other adminis- 
trative elements. Indicative of the level of importance placed 
on science and technology is the fact that Prime Minister P.V. 
Narasimha Rao held the portfolio for this ministry in the early 
and mid-1990s. Some argued, however, that Rao could truly 
strengthen the sector by appointing, as his predecessors did, a 
chief science adviser and a committee of leading scientists to 
provide high-level advice and delegate the running of these 
ministries to others. 

The National Council on Science and Technology is at the 
apex of the science and technology infrastructure and is 
chaired by the prime minister. The integration of science and 
technology planning with national socioeconomic planning is 
carried out by the Planning Commission (see Development 
Planning, this ch.). Scientific advisory committees in individual 
socioeconomic ministries formulate long-term programs and 
identify applicable technologies for their particular area of 
responsibility. The rest of the infrastructure has seven major 
components. The national-level component includes govern- 
ment organizations that provide hands-on research and devel- 
opment, such as the ministries of atomic energy and space, the 
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR — a compo- 
nent of the Ministry of Science and Technology), and the 
Indian Council of Agricultural Research. The second compo- 
nent, organizations that support research and development, 
includes the departments or ministries of biotechnology, non- 



364 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

conventional energy sources, ocean development, and science 
and technology. The third-echelon component includes state 
government research and development agencies, which are 
usually involved with agriculture, animal husbandry, irrigation, 
public health, and the like and that also are part of the national 
infrastructure. The four other major components are the uni- 
versity system, private research organizations, public-sector 
research and development establishments, and research and 
development centers within private industries. Almost all inter- 
nationally recognized university-level research is carried out in 
government-controlled or government-supported institutions. 
The results of government-sponsored research are transferred 
to public- and private-sector industries through the National 
Research and Development Corporation. This corporation is 
part of the Ministry of Science and Technology and has as its 
purpose the commercialization of scientific and technical 
know-how, the promotion of research through grants and 
loans, promotion of government and industry joint projects, 
and the export of Indian technology. 

Resource Allocation 

Central government financial support of research and devel- 
opment — including subsidies to public-sector industries — was 
75.7 percent of total financial support in FY 1992. State govern- 
ments provided an additional 9.3 percent. However, even when 
combined with the private-sector contribution (15.0 percent), 
research and development expenditures were only just over 0.8 
percent of the GDP in FY 1992. Although there was growth in 
research and development expenditures during the 1980s and 
early 1990s, the rate of growth was less than the GNP rate of 
growth during the same period and was a cause of concern for 
government planners. Moreover, the bulk of government 
research and development expenditures (80 percent in FY 
1992) goes to only five agencies: the Defence Research and 
Development Organisation (DRDO), the Ministry of Space, 
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the Ministry of 
Atomic Energy, and CSIR, and to their constituent organiza- 
tions. 

Despite long-term government commitment to research and 
development, India compares poorly with other major Asian 
countries. In Japan, for example, nearly 3 percent of GDP goes 
to research and development; in South Korea and Taiwan, the 
figure is nearly 2 percent. In India, research and development 



365 



India: A Country Study 

receives only 0.8 percent of GDP; only China among the major 
players spends less (0.7 percent). However, India's share of 
GDP expenditure on research and development has increased 
slightly: in 1975 it stood at 0.5 percent, in 1980 at 0.6 percent, 
and in 1985 at 0.8, where it has become static. 

Because of the allocation of financial inputs, India has been 
more successful at promoting security-oriented and large-scale 
scientific endeavors, such as space and nuclear science pro- 
grams, than at promoting industrial technology. Part of the lat- 
ter lack of achievement has been attributed to the limited role 
of universities in the research and development system. 
Instead, India has concentrated on government-sponsored spe- 
cialized institutes and provided minimal funding to university 
research programs. The low funding level has encouraged uni- 
versity scientists to find jobs in the more liberally funded pub- 
lic-sector national laboratories. Moreover, private industry in 
India plays a relatively minor role in the science and technol- 
ogy system (15 percent of the total investment compared with 
Japan's 80 percent and slightly more than 50 percent in the 
United States). This low level of private-sector investment has 
been attributed to a number of factors, including the prepon- 
derance of trade-oriented rather than technology-oriented 
industries, protectionist tariffs, and rigid regulation of foreign 
investment. The largest private-sector research and develop- 
ment expenditures during the FY 1990-FY 1992 period were in 
the areas of engineering and technology, particularly in the 
industrial development, transportation, communications, and 
health services sectors. Nonetheless, they were relatively small 
expenditures when compared with government and public-sec- 
tor inputs in the same fields. The key element for Indian indus- 
try to benefit from the greater government and public-sector 
efforts in the 1990s is the ability of the government and public- 
sector laboratories to develop technologies with broad applica- 
tions and to transfer these technologies — as is done by the 
National Research and Development Corporation — to private- 
sector industries able to apply them with maximum efficiency. 

India ranks eleventh in the world in its number of active sci- 
entific and technical personnel. Including medical personnel, 
they were estimated at around 188,000 in 1950, 450,000 in 
1960, 1.2 million in 1970, 1.8 million in 1980, and 3.8 million 
in 1990. India's universities, university-level institutions, and 
colleges have produced more than 200,000 science and tech- 
nology graduates per year since 1985. Doctorates are awarded 



366 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

each year to about 3,000 people in science, between 500 and 
600 in engineering, around 800 in agricultural sciences, and 
close to 6,000 in medicine. However, in 1990 India had the low- 
est number of scientific and engineering personnel (3.3) per 
10,000 persons in the national labor force of the major Asian 
nations. For example, Japan, had nearly seventy-five per 10,000, 
South Korea had more than thirty-seven per 10,000, and China 
had 5.6 per 10,000. 

The quality of higher education in the sciences has not 
improved as quickly as desired since independence because of 
the flight of many top scientists from academia to higher-pay- 
ing jobs in government-funded research laboratories. Foreign 
aid, aimed at counteracting university faculty shortages, has 
produced top-rate graduates as intended. However, because of 
limited job prospects at home, many of the brightest physi- 
cians, scientists, and engineers have been attracted by opportu- 
nities abroad, particularly in Western nations. Since the early 
1990s, this trend has appeared to be changing as more high- 
technology jobs, especially in fields requiring computer science 
skills, have begun to open in India as a result of economic lib- 
eralization. The "brain bank" network of Indian scientists 
abroad that was seen as a potential source of talent by some 
observers in the 1980s has proven to be a valuable resource in 
the 1990s. 

Using imported technology, scientists made major advances 
in microprocessors during the 1980s that brought the country 
to only one generation (three to four years) behind interna- 
tional leaders. A sign of how much microcomputer use has 
developed could be seen in sales: from US$93 million in FY 
1983 to US$488 million in FY 1988. Facilitating the use of auto- 
mation has been a counterpart to the expansion of the data 
communication field. The development of the "Param 9000" 
supercomputer prototype, reportedly capable of billions of 
floating point operations per second, was completed in Decem- 
ber 1994 and was announced by the state-owned Centre for 
Development of Advanced Computing as ready for sale to 
operational users in March 1995. Earlier Param models, using 
parallel processing technologies to achieve near-supercom- 
puter performance, were produced in sufficient quantity for 
export in the early 1990s. 

DRDO developed its own parallel processing computer, 
which was unveiled by Prime Minister Rao in April 1995. Devel- 
oped by DRDO's Advanced Numerical Research and Analysis 



367 



India: A Country Study 



Group in Hyderabad, the supercomputer is capable of 1 billion 
points per second speed and can be used for geophysics, image 
processing, and molecular modeling. 

Major Research Organizations 

Agriculture 

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research was established 
in 1929 as an autonomous clearinghouse-type organization 
charged with conducting, aiding, promoting, and coordinating 
agricultural and animal husbandry research. It has seventy-six 
institutes, bureaus, centers, and project directorates and sev- 
enty-one nationwide coordinated research projects. Education 
programs are mostly operated through India's twenty-six agri- 
cultural universities. The council has administrative links to the 
Department of Agricultural Research and Education of the 
Ministry of Agriculture (see Development Programs, ch. 7). 

The council supports numerous research institutes through- 
out the states and union territories. They include laboratories 
doing research on arid zones, birds, aquaculture, cattle, 
agroengineering, horticulture, wool, salinity, soils, veterinary 
science, animal and plant genetics, land use, dairy production, 
and a variety of crops, including rice, jute, cotton, tobacco, oil- 
seeds, potatoes, and others. 

Biotechnology 

India has placed considerable effort on biotechnology. At 
the national level, the Department of Biotechnology, estab- 
lished in 1986 as part of the Ministry of Science and Technol- 
ogy, is responsible for biotechnology research and 
development and biotechnology-related manufacturing, 
including bio-safety regulation. It also acts as the government's 
agent for biotechnology imports. The department supports two 
autonomous laboratories, the National Institute of Immunobi- 
ology in New Delhi and the National Facility for Animal Tissue 
and Cell Culture in Pune, Maharashtra. Research and develop- 
ment takes place in the areas of burn, heart, and cornea treat- 
ment; germplasma banks for plants, animals, algae, and 
microbes; viral vaccine; animal embryo technology; animal and 
human fertility control; communicable and genetic disease 
prevention; and biofertilizer, biocontrol, and biomass agents. 
The department also controls two state-owned enterprises 
involved in vaccine production, the Bharat Immunologicals 



368 



Parallel supercomputer developed in India 
Courtesy Indian Ministry of External Affairs 

and Biologicals Corporation and the Indian Vaccines Corpora- 
tion, both in New Delhi. 

CSIR oversees numerous subnational biotechnology institu- 
tions. These include the Central Drug Research Institute in 
Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh; the Centre for Cellular and Molecular 
Biology in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh; the Indian Institute of 
Chemical Biology in Calcutta; and the Institute of Microbial 
Technology in Chandigarh among others. 

Defense 

DRDO is subordinate to the Ministry of Defence, and its 
director general is the chief scientific adviser to the minister of 
defence. DRDO, which was established in 1958, has forty-five 
research laboratories and institutes serving the research and 
development needs of the armed forces. Its significant achieve- 
ments include the development of light combat aircraft, air- 
craft engines, light field artillery, ballistic bomb fuses, smoke 
and incendiary devices, combat vehicles, satellite communica- 
tions terminals, encryption devices, sonar systems, torpedo 
propulsion devices, high-performance inertial guidance sys- 
tems, target acquisition and ground electronics, and various 
rocket and missile systems. 

Education Institutions 

The Indian Institute of Science is a university-level organiza- 
tion that has contributed much to Bangalore's development as 
a technology capital. The institute was founded in 1909 on land 
in Bangalore donated by the maharajah of Mysore, using an 
endowment provided by one of the major benefactors of mod- 



369 



India: A Country Study 



ern Indian science, Jamsetji Nusserwanji (J.N.) Tata, for the 
development of experimental science. Before independence 
and for some years after independence, the institute had a pri- 
marily British and British-trained faculty committed to raising 
India's scientific levels. In 1956 the institute was given univer- 
sity status. 

The Indian Institute of Science has more than forty depart- 
ments, centers, laboratories, and education programs orga- 
nized for the study of biological, chemical, electrical, 
mathematical, mechanical, and physical sciences. It also has a 
major library, the National Centre for Science Information, 
and a fee-based Centre for Scientific and Industrial Consul- 
tancy. 

The Indian Academy of Sciences is also located in Banga- 
lore. The academy was founded by C.V. Raman in 1934 "to pro- 
mote the progress and uphold the cause of science, both in the 
pure and applied branches." Although the academy is not a 
research institute, it provides scholarships and fellowships, 
publishes research results, and bestows honors on deserving 
scientists, both Indian and foreign. The academy is half funded 
by the Department of Science and Technology, and the 
remainder of the budget is met through subscriptions to its 
publications. Raman also founded the Raman Research Insti- 
tute in 1948 as an independent, private science laboratory at 
which he and others continued to conduct ground-breaking 
research on the campus of the Indian Institute of Science. 

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is a university-level 
entity providing undergraduate and graduate education in 
engineering and technology. The five autonomous IIT cam- 
puses listed in order of their founding, are located in Kharag- 
pur (West Bengal; 1950), Bombay (1958), Madras (1959), 
Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh; 1960), and New Delhi (1961). The IIT 
system was founded by the central government in 1950 and 
raised to an "institution of national importance" by Parliament 
by means of the Indian Institute of Technology Act of 1956 and 
its subsequent amendments. Besides receiving central govern- 
ment support in the early years, IIT received assistance from 
West Germany, the Soviet Union, Britain, the United Nations 
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 
and the United States. Instructional and research departments 
range from agricultural engineering to aeronautical engineer- 
ing and from earth sciences and postharvest technology to 
naval architecture and ocean engineering. To round out stu- 



370 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

dents' education, the IIT system also offers humanities and 
social science courses. For example, the Madras campus of IIT 
teaches economics, history, English, psychology, and business 
at the undergraduate level in support of other departments 
and at the graduate level leading to a master's degree in indus- 
trial management. While each campus has departments in the 
basic physical sciences, there are unique departments and spe- 
cializations at each of the five sites. Admission to IIT is highly 
competitive; some 100,000 applicants take placement examina- 
tions for 2,000 student positions each year. 

Although most important research is done in government- 
and industry-sponsored laboratories, several universities, in 
addition to the Indian Institute of Science and the five IIT cam- 
puses, are involved in significant research. Those with notable 
science programs are Delhi University, Benares Hindu Univer- 
sity in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Aligarh Muslim University in 
Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, and Shanti Niketan University in Shanti 
Niketan, West Bengal. 

Information Science 

The Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre (INS- 
DOC) is a major government science and technology informa- 
tion agency. Established in 1952 as part of CSIR, INSDOC has 
its main office in New Delhi and regional centers in Bangalore, 
Calcutta, and Madras. The center provides document delivery, 
a wide range of on-line database services, directed research and 
bibliographic services, translation services, training and test- 
ing, and other science information services. It also publishes 
science and technology-related bibliographies, abstracts, 
library science documentation, conference proceedings, direc- 
tories, and reference aids, and operates the National Science 
Library. INSDOC serves government agencies, academia, and 
public and private organizations and individuals throughout 
India and South Asia on a partial cost-recovery and partially 
subsidized basis. Like many government agencies and govern- 
ment-funded organizations, INSDOC in the early 1990s was 
compelled to recover ever-increasing percentages — upward of 
50 percent for some institutes in 1993 — of its annual budget 
from nonappropriated sources. 

Industry 

Founded in 1942, CSIR is headquartered in New Delhi, but 
its network of laboratories is spread throughout the nation. 



371 



India: A Country Study 



Although heavily involved in science, biotechnology, and infor- 
mation science activities, it also emphasizes industrial research. 
The president of CSIR is ex officio the prime minister, a situa- 
tion that gives the council considerable political prestige. 
CSIR's network of nearly 200 national laboratories has links 
throughout the nation to another 200 government-sector 
research and development institutions and about 1,000 
research and development units in the industrial sector that 
are supported by both public and private funds (see Early Pol- 
icy Developments, this ch.). Beyond pure and applied research, 
CSIR also has outreach programs such as those under the aus- 
pices of the National Institute of Science, Technology, and 
Development Studies (NISTADS), established in 1974 as a cen- 
ter and raised to institute level in 1981. 

CSIR also conducts and funds studies, organizes conferences 
and training programs, prepares exhibits, and publishes 
reports on the history and organization of Indian science, 
resource allocation and planning, analyses of the science and 
technology community (including behavioral research on sci- 
entists), the societal and environmental impact of science and 
technology, and international cooperation. Part of CSIR's pub- 
lication program is directed at elementary and secondary 
school students with the intention of popularizing science at 
early ages. 

The emphasis on industrial research is observable in the 
organizations supported by CSIR. They include, among others, 
the Central Electrochemical Research Institute in Karaikudi, 
Tamil Nadu; the Central Electronics Engineering Institute in 
Pilani, Rajasthan; the Central Glass and Ceramic Research 
Institute in Calcutta; the Central Leather Research Institute in 
Madras; the Indian Institute of Petroleum in Dehra Dun, Uttar 
Pradesh; the National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, 
Bihar; and the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi. 

Nuclear Power 

The key policy-planning body for India's nuclear energy pro- 
gram is the Atomic Energy Commission, which was founded in 
1948 and has offices in New Delhi and Bombay. The chairman 
of the commission is concurrently the secretary of the Depart- 
ment of Atomic Energy (later the Ministry of Atomic Energy), 
which was established in 1954 (with Homi Bhabha as is first 
head) and exercises executive control over nuclear programs 
and executes India's development and utilization of nuclear 



372 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

energy for peaceful purposes. To carry out its avowed peaceful- 
use mission, the department has policy bodies involved with 
regulatory and safety issues; research and development centers, 
both integral to the department and private concerns that 
receive government funding; organizations involved with 
nuclear fuel and heavy water development; and public-sector 
rare earths and uranium mining and electronics companies 
(see Energy, this ch.). The department also funds numerous 
research institute- and university-based projects. 

As a far-reaching result of India's 1974 test of a nuclear 
explosive device, nuclear proliferation problems continue to 
confront both the department and the commission (see Space 
and Nuclear Programs, ch. 10). Divisive issues between India 
and the United States over nuclear-fuel supplies for the Tara- 
pur nuclear power plant (which the United States wants cut 
off) were compounded in 1993 when the Ministry of Atomic 
Energy announced it was seeking foreign buyers for surplus 
heavy water being made by India's seven operating heavy water 
plants. The plants were developed originally because of the 
fuel shortage that confronted India after the Treaty on the 
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was signed by most 
other nuclear nations in 1968. Over time the plants met domes- 
tic needs and began to produce an exportable surplus, leading 
to India-United States friction. The Atomic Energy Commis- 
sion's January 1994 announcement that it planned to continue 
its development of fast breeder reactors also was likely to cause 
international concern. 

India also has made a major commitment to the use of 
nuclear power for the generation of electricity. Major resources 
have been devoted to research, power station construction, and 
delivery services. 

Space 

The space program had its genesis in the Indian National 
Committee of Space Research, which was established in 1962 as 
part of the Department of Atomic Energy. In 1972 the Depart- 
ment of Space and the Space Commission were established as 
the executive and policy wings of the program. The Depart- 
ment of Space operates the Indian Space Research Organisa- 
tion (ISRO, established in 1969) and four independent 
projects: the Indian National Satellite Space Segment Project, 
the Natural Resource Management System, the National 
Remote Sensing Agency, and the Physical Research Laboratory. 



373 



India: A Country Study 



The department also sponsors research in various academic 
and research institutions. The ISRO is headquartered in Ban- 
galore and has operating units at twenty-two sites throughout 
the country that deal with space systems, propulsion, commu- 
nications, telemetry and tracking, research, launches, and 
other facets of the space program. The major achievements of 
the space program have been in the area of the domestic 
design, production, and launching of remote sensing and com- 
munications satellites. The primary goal of the space program 
is to have independent remote sensing and communications 
satellite systems with launcher autonomy 

In 1992 the ISRO set up the Antrix Corporation to market 
space and telecommunications products to help recover some 
of the costs of the annual space budget. That budget increased 
from Rs3.8 billion in FY 1990 to an estimated Rs7.5 billion in 
FY 1994. The majority of the FY 1994 expenditures were slated 
for rocket development (50 percent) and communications and 
remote sensing satellite operations (26.8 percent). 

Space research began with the establishment of the Thumba 
Equatorial Rocket Launching Station near Thiruvanan- 
thapuram, Kerala. From Thumba Indian scientists launched 
United States-made rockets carrying French satellites to study 
the upper atmospheric winds over the magnetic equator. From 
this station, Indian scientists also have carried out original 
research in electrojet currents over the magnetic equator, verti- 
cal profiles of airglow, and cosmic X-ray background radiation. 
The first Indian experimental satellite was launched in 1975, 
followed by four others: operational communications and 
remote sensing satellites have been launched as part of the 
Indian National Satellite System (Insat). Insat is an interagency 
project operated by the Department of Space for domestic 
radio relay, computer network, television, rural telegraph net- 
work, and weather, emergency, and other radio communica- 
tions. 

Three satellites operated by Insat were in use in the mid- 
1990s in cooperation with the International Telecommunica- 
tion Union's International Telecommunications Satellite 
(Intelsat) system. The three satellites (the first-generation 
Insat-1D in June 1990, the second-generation Insat-2A in July 
1992, and Insat-2B in July 1993) were indigenously built under 
the direction of the ISRO and put into geostationary orbit over 
the Indian Ocean using French rockets launched in French 
Guiana. Additional and more advanced communications satel- 



374 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

lites — Insat-2C, Insat-2D, and Insat-2E — were planned for 
launch in FY 1994, FY 1995, and FY 1996. 

Although early Indian satellites were launched by the Soviet 
Union, the United States, and the European Space Agency, in 
1980 India began using domestically produced launch vehicles 
for its Rohini and Stretched Rohini experimental satellites. 
The ISRO has launch ranges at Thumba, Sriharikota Island on 
the east coast of Andhra Pradesh, and Balasore in Orissa. 

Foreign observers in 1993 believed that the launch vehicle 
program was the least developed part of the space program 
and had fallen behind the satellite program in technological 
capability. Supporting this belief was the September 1993 
launch of India's liquid-and-solid-fuel Polar Satellite Launch 
Vehicle (PSLV), designed to carry a 1,000-kilogram satellite, at 
Sriharikota. Although the PSLV-D1 was successfully launched, 
it malfunctioned before reaching orbit. Despite such setbacks, 
the national goal of achieving launcher autonomy has been set 
for 2000. 

In May 1994, after several failed launches, India's five-stage, 
solid-fuel Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV) pro- 
gram, which started its test phase in 1987, succeeded in deploy- 
ing a 133-kilogram satellite and placing it in a low earth orbit 
via a solid-fuel launch vehicle, the ASLV-D4. The ASLV-D4 was 
launched from Sriharikota. In March 1995, the head of the 
ISRO announced that India would become self-reliant in 
launcher technology by 1997-98 when the first Geostationary 
Launch Vehicle (GSLV) flight was planned. 

Through international cooperation programs, India also has 
put a man in space with the Soviet Union, has participated in 
various French and German space ventures, and has had a pay- 
load aboard the United States Space Shuttle. It also provided 
technical expertise to the Arab Satellite Communication Orga- 
nization (Arabsat) and entered into a cooperative space 
research agreement with the Ukrainian National Space Agency. 

Indian weather satellites help nations throughout the Indian 
Ocean littoral by providing weather information and real-time 
distress alert services. Like the nuclear energy program, the 
space program has military implications that are contentious 
international political issues (see Russia; United States, ch. 9). 

Other Leading Institutions 

Although much of the top executive authority of the science 
and technology infrastructure resides in New Delhi, some pre- 



375 



India: A Country Study 



mier science and technology institutions are located elsewhere. 
Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka, is a center for high-tech- 
nology industry and a major research and development site. 
Much of the activity in Bangalore's "Silicon Valley" is carried 
out through collaborative arrangements with multinational 
corporations in fields such as aeronautics, communications, 
electronics, and machine tools. By 1990 there were more than 
100,000 people employed by 3,000 companies in the electron- 
ics industry alone. 

The Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay con- 
ducts fundamental research in astronomy, mathematics, molec- 
ular biology, and physics; and applied research in computer 
science, ion accelerators, material science, and solid state elec- 
tronics. Organizationally, the institute is a component of the 
Department of Atomic Energy. When the atomic energv pro- 
gram began in 1948, the Tata Institute provided trained staff, 
and in 1955, because of the important role it p laved in nuclear 
energy research, the institute was recognized as the National 
Centre of the Government of India for Advanced Study and 
Fundamental Research in Nuclear Science and Mathematics. 
In this capacity, the institute became a world-class nuclear 
research facility, recognized for its discoveries in the field of 
strange particles. 

Research on applied mathematics, astrophysics, deoxyribo- 
nucleic acid (DNA), high-power microwaves, stratospheric and 
underground nuclear physics, theoretical computer science, 
and other high-technology fields is carried out by the Tata 
Institute in Bombay and at its facilities in Bangalore and Kolar 
in Karnataka, Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Pachmarhi in 
Madhva Pradesh, Pune in Maharashtra, and Udhagamandalam 
(Ooty) in Tamil Nadu. 

Tata Institute scientists designed the first Indian digital com- 
puter in the 1960s and since then have contributed directly to 
the manufacture of microwave components and devices. Joint 
work has been conducted with foreign laboratories, such as 
accelerator experiments with Switzerland and the United 
States. The Tata Institute also provides both formal and infor- 
mal science education aimed at improving the quality of sci- 
ence education and developing remedial measures for 
improving scholastic performance. 

Prospects in Science and Technology 

Some observers of the Indian science and technology com- 



376 



Character and Structure of the Economy 

munity, while acknowledging its strong points, complain that 
there is a lack of communication and coordination among the 
numerous science and technology institutes. They also have 
commented that because of a lack of materials and purpose, 
the quality of some government laboratories is low and that 
quality-control research is found primarily in the private sector. 
Although little movement is being made toward privatization 
of science and technology research, the government is trying 
to bring private industry — where there is more innovation and 
competitiveness — into the research process. In the 1990s, a 
considerable amount of discussion and experimentation is 
occurring in the area of technology transfer from fundamental 
research institutes to the marketplace. 

On a more fundamental level, it has been observed that 
there often is, at best, a tenuous link between major financial 
investment in research and development and the results 
enjoyed by India's society and economy. Despite major achieve- 
ments in such fields as agriculture, telecommunications, health 
care, and nuclear energy — many of which derived from foreign 
technology inputs — parts of India's population face malnutri- 
tion, depend on bullock carts for transportation, suffer from 
diseases wiped out in many other nations, and use cow dung 
and wood for fuel. Although the government has decentralized 
to some extent, inordinate government control over planning 
and operation of research institutions continues, and the weak 
link between the research and industrial sectors persists. How- 
ever, with its sizable domestic- and foreign-trained base of sci- 
entists and engineers and considerable participation in the 
scientific programs of official international organizations, 
India has immense potential for self-fulfillment and technolog- 
ical aid to other Asian nations in the early twenty-first century. 

In the mid-1990s, the Indian economy appears to be at a 
crossroads. The economic system established after indepen- 
dence, which was marked by a large public sector, a tightly reg- 
ulated private sector, and a limited role for foreign trade, is 
under attack from many quarters. However, the extent to which 
the government is willing and able to make changes remains 
unclear, and the opposition of vested interests to liberalization 
makes it likely that reforms will continue to take place only 
gradually. 

* * * 



377 



India: A Country Study 

A good survey of the Indian economy from independence 
until the mid-1980s is V.N. Balasubramanyam's The Economy of 
India. The various essays in The Indian Economy: Recent Develop- 
ment and Future Prospects, edited by Robert E.B. Lucas and 
Gustav F. Papanek, cover the same period and also evaluate the 
early stage of the "new economic policy" of the mid-1980s. For 
more recent developments, the periodical literature is the most 
useful, especially the articles in Economic and Political Weekly 
[Bombay]. Also helpful are Bimaljalan's India's Economic Crisis, 
which covers the 1990 balance of payments crisis, and the vol- 
ume he edited, The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects, which 
reviews India's economic conditions since 1947. India in Transi- 
tion: Freeing the Economy, byjagdish Bhagwati, is also an impor- 
tant contribution to the analysis of India's economic reforms. 

The most current and easily accessible sources on the econ- 
omy are two publications of the Economist Intelligence Unit in 
London: Country Profile: India, Nepal, an annual survey of the 
economy; and Country Report: India, Nepal, a quarterly publica- 
tion that includes the latest economic information. The annual 
Economic Survey, prepared by India's Ministry of Finance, 
reviews economic developments in each fiscal year. The Minis- 
try of Planning's Statistical Abstract, which is published at irregu- 
lar intervals, provides considerable statistical information, 
including the most recent released by the government. 

There are numerous works on Indian science and technol- 
ogy. A.K. Bag's Science and Civilization in India, Abdur Rahman's 
Science and Technology in Indian Culture, and the Directory of Scien- 
tific Research Institutions in India, published by the Indian 
National Scientific Documentation Centre, are useful. Also 
very useful are annual and other reports from various scientific 
institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Science, and gov- 
ernment science agencies, such as the Council of Scientific and 
Industrial Research and the Indian Space Research Organisa- 
tion. Several articles by William A. Blanpied are helpful cri- 
tiques of India's scientific and technology developments. (For 
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



378 



Chapter 7. Agriculture 




A cow drawn in the paper stencil art (sanzi khakaj style found in parts of 
Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan 



AGRICULTURE HAS ALWAYS BEEN INDIA'S most important 
economic sector. In the mid-1990s, it provides approximately 
one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP — see Glossary) 
and employs roughly two-thirds of the population. Since inde- 
pendence in 1947, the share of agriculture in the GDP has 
declined in comparison to the growth of the industrial and ser- 
vices sectors. However, agriculture still provides the bulk of 
wage goods required by the nonagricultural sector as well as 
numerous raw materials for industry. Moreover, the direct 
share of agricultural and allied sectors in total exports is 
around 18 percent. When the indirect share of agricultural 
products in total exports, such as cotton textiles and jute 
goods, is taken into account, the percentage is much higher. 

Dependence on agricultural imports in the early 1960s con- 
vinced planners that India's growing population, as well as con- 
cerns about national independence, security, and political 
stability, required self-sufficiency in food production. This per- 
ception led to a program of agricultural improvement called 
the Green Revolution, to a public distribution system, and to 
price supports for farmers (see The Green Revolution, this 
ch.). In the 1980s, despite three years of meager rainfall and a 
drought in the middle of the decade, India managed to get 
along with very few food imports because of the growth in 
food-grain production and the development of a large buffer 
stock against potential agricultural shortfalls. By the early 
1990s, India was self-sufficient in food-grain production. Agri- 
cultural production has kept pace with the food needs of the 
growing population as the result of increased yields in almost 
all crops, but especially in cereals. Food grains and pulses 
account for two-thirds of agricultural production in the mid- 
1990s. The growth in food-grain production is a result of con- 
centrated efforts to increase all the Green Revolution inputs 
needed for higher yields: better seed, more fertilizer, improved 
irrigation, and education of farmers. Although increased irri- 
gation has helped to lessen year-to-year fluctuations in farm 
production resulting from the vagaries of the monsoons, it has 
not eliminated those fluctuations. 

Food-grain production increased from 50.8 million tons in 
fiscal year (FY — see Glossary) 1950 to 176.3 million tons in FY 
1990. The compound growth rate from FY 1949 to FY 1987 was 



381 



India: A Counties Study 



2.7 percent per annum. Overall, wheat was the best performer, 
with production increasing more than eightfold in forty years. 
Wheat was followed by rice, which had a production increase of 
more than 350 percent. Coarse grains had a poorer rate of 
increase but still doubled in output during those years: produc- 
tion of pulses went up by less than 70 percent. The increase in 
oilseed production, however, was not enough to fill consumer 
demands, and India went from being an exporter of oilseeds in 
the 1950s to a major importer in the 1970s and the early 1980s. 
The agricultural sector attempted to increase oilseed produc- 
tion in the 1980s and early 1990s. These efforts were successful: 
oilseed production doubled and the need for imports was 
reduced. In the early 1990s, India was on the verge of self-suffi- 
ciency in oilseed production. After independence in 1947, the 
cropping pattern became more diversified, and cultivation of 
commercial crops received a new impetus in line with domestic 
demands and export requirements. Xontraditional crops, such 
as summer mung (a variety of lentil, part of the pulse family), 
sovbeans, peanuts, and sunflowers, were gradually gaining 
importance. 

The per capita availability of a number of food items 
increased significantly in the postindependence period despite 
a population increase from 361 million in 1951 to 846 million 
in 1991. Per capita availability of cereals went up from 334 
grams per dav in 1951 to 470 grams per day in 1990. Availability 
of edible oils increased significantly, from 3.2 kilograms per 
year per capita in FY 1960 to 5.4 kilograms in FY 1990. Simi- 
larly, the availability of sugar per capita increased from 4.7 to 
12.5 kilograms per year during the same period. The one area 
in which availability decreased was pulses, which went from 
60.7 grams per day to 39.4 grams per day. This shortfall pre- 
sents a serious problem in a country where a large part of the 
population is vegetarian and pulses are the main source of pro- 
tein. 

There are large disparities among India's states and territo- 
ries in agricultural performance, only some of which can be 
attributed to differences in climate or initial endowments of 
infrastructure such as irrigation. Realizing the importance of 
agricultural production for economic development, the central 
government has played an active role in all aspects of agricul- 
tural development. Planning is centralized, and plan priorities, 
policies, and resource allocations are decided at the central 
level. Food and price policy also are decided by the central gov- 



3S2 



Agriculture 



ernment. Thus, although agriculture is constitutionally the 
responsibility of the states rather than the central government, 
the latter plays a key role in formulating policy and providing 
financial resources for agriculture. 

Land Use 

In FY 1987, field crops were planted on about 45 percent of 
the total land mass of India. Of this cultivated land, almost 37 
million hectares were double-cropped, making the gross sown 
area equivalent to almost 173 million hectares. About 15 mil- 
lion hectares were permanent pastureland or were planted in 
various tree crops and groves. Approximately 108 million hec- 
tares were either developed for nonagricultural uses, forested, 
or unsuited for agriculture because of topography. About 29.6 
million hectares of the remaining land were classified as culti- 
vable but fallow, and 15.6 million hectares were classified as cul- 
tivable wasteland. These 45 million hectares constitute all the 
land left for expanding the sown area; for various reasons, how- 
ever, much of it is unsuited for immediate cropping. Expansion 
in crop production, therefore, has to come almost entirely 
from increasing yields on lands already in some kind of agricul- 
tural use (see table 26; table 27, Appendix). 

Topography, soils, rainfall, and the availability of water for 
irrigation have been major determinants of the crop and live- 
stock patterns characteristic of the three major geographic 
regions of India — the Himalayas, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, and 
the Peninsula — and their agro-ecological subregions (see fig. 5; 
Principal Regions, ch. 2). Government policy as regards irriga- 
tion, the introduction of new crops, research and education, 
and incentives has had some impact on changing the tradi- 
tional crop and livestock patterns in these subregions. The 
monsoons, however, play a critical role in determining whether 
the harvest will be bountiful, average, or poor in any given year. 
One of the objectives of government policy in the early 1990s 
was to find methods of reducing this dependence on the mon- 
soons. 

Himalayas 

The Himalayan region, with some 520,000 square kilometers 
of land, ranks well behind the other two regions in agricultural 
importance. Despite generally adequate rainfall, the rugged 
topography allows less than 10 percent of the land to be used 



383 



India: A Country Study 



for agriculture. The sandy, loamy soils on the hillsides and the 
alluvial clays in the region's premier agricultural subregion, the 
Vale of Kashmir — located in the northwestern part of the state 
of Jammu and Kashmir — provide fertile land for agricultural 
use. The main crops are rice, corn, wheat, barley, millet, and 
potatoes. Most of India's temperate-zone fruits (apples, apri- 
cots, cherries, and peaches) and walnuts are grown in the vale. 
Sericulture and sheepherding also are being undertaken. In 
the eastern Himalayan subregion, the soils are moderately rich 
in organic matter and are acidic. Although much of the farm- 
ing is done on terraced hillsides, there is a significant amount 
of shifting cultivation, which has resulted in deforestation and 
soil erosion. Rice, corn, millet, potatoes, and oilseeds were the 
main crops in the early 1990s. The region also is well known for 
the tea plantations of the mountainous Darjiling (Darjeeling) 
area in the northern tip of West Bengal. 

Indo-Gangetic Plain 

The vast Indo-Gangetic Plain, extending from Punjab to 
Assam, is the most intensively farmed zone of the country and 
one of the most intensively farmed in the world. Rainfall, most 
of which comes with the southwest monsoon, is generally ade- 
quate for summer-grown crops, but in some years vast areas are 
seared by drought. Fortunately, much of the land has access, or 
potential access, to irrigation waters from wells and rivers, 
ensuring crops even in years of drought and making possible a 
winter crop as well as a summer harvest. Wheat is the main 
crop in the west, rice in the east. Pulses, sorghum, oilseeds, and 
sugarcane are among other important crops. Mango orchards 
are common. Other fruits of the subregion include guavas, 
jackfruit, plums, lemons, oranges, and pomegranates. 

In the Great Indian Desert, rainfall is scanty and erratic. 
About 20 percent of the total area is under cultivation, mostly 
in Haryana and Gujarat states, and comparatively little in Rajas- 
than. The Indira Gandhi Canal — begun in 1958 as the Rajast- 
han Canal — was designed to bring water from the north. 
Progress was slow, and only the first stage was close to comple- 
tion by the end of the Seventh Five-Year Plan (FY 1985-89). By 
then, the canal had substantially increased the area under culti- 
vation in Rajasthan, and a new completion date of 1999 is antic- 
ipated (see Development Programs, this ch; Development 
Planning, ch. 6). The cultivable area is expected to expand fur- 
ther with the development of the canal's second stage during 



384 



Agriculture 



the 1990s. The leading crops of the subregion are millet, sor- 
ghum, wheat, and peanuts. Vast expanses of sparse vegetation 
provide sustenance for sheep and goats. In the late 1980s, dairy 
farming became important in locations that had sufficient pas- 
tureland. 

Peninsular India 

The east and west coasts, the coastal plains, and the deltaic 
tracts that extend inland for some 100 to 200 kilometers in 
Peninsular India benefit from both the June-to-September 
southwest monsoon and the October-to-November northeast 
monsoon. Farther inland, as the topography and climate 
change, so does the pattern of agriculture. The proportion of 
land under cultivation ranges from about 50 percent along the 
coastal plain and in the western part of Andhra Pradesh to 
about 25 percent in eastern Madhya Pradesh. Except in areas 
of certain developed river valleys, double-cropping is rare. Rice 
is the predominant crop in high-rainfall areas and sorghum in 
low-rainfall areas. Other crops of significance along the east 
coast and in the Central Highlands in the early 1990s were 
pigeon peas, mustard, peanuts, millet, linseed, castor beans, 
cotton, and tobacco. 

On the Deccan Plateau, deep, alluvial black soils that retain 
moisture for a long time are the basis for much of the region's 
output of farm products. However, the region also has many 
farming areas that are covered by thin, light-textured soils that 
suffer quickly from drought. Whether a crop is made or lost is, 
therefore, often dependent on the availability of supplemen- 
tary water from ponds and streams. About 60 percent of the 
land in the state of Maharashtra was under cultivation in the 
early 1990s, less in Madhya Pradesh. About 75 percent of the 
cropland of the Deccan during this period was planted in food 
crops, such as millet, sorghum, rice, wheat, and peanuts; most 
of the remaining cropland was planted in fodder crops. 

In the far south of the Peninsula, the area under cultivation 
varies from about 10 percent in the Western Ghats, to 25 per- 
cent in the western coastal tract, to 55 percent on the Karna- 
taka Plateau. Here is the India — the land of spices — that Vasco 
da Gama and other European navigators came searching for in 
the fifteenth century. On the Karnataka Plateau, sorghum, mil- 
let, pulses, cotton, and oilseeds are the main crops on the 90 
percent of the cultivated land that is dry-farmed; rice, sugar- 
cane, and vegetables predominate on the 10 percent that was 



385 



India: A County Study 



irrigated in the late 1980s. Coconuts,, areca. coffee., pepper, 
rubber, cashew nuts, tapioca., and cardamom are widely grown 
on plantations in the Xilgiri Hills and on the western slopes of 
the Western Ghats. 

Land Tenure 

Matters concerning the ownership, acquisition, distribution, 
and taxation of land are, bv provision of the constitution., 
under the jurisdiction of the states (see Local Government., ch. 
S . Because of the diverse attitudes and approaches that would 
result from such freedom if there were no general guidelines, 
the central government has at times laid down directives deal- 
ing with the main problems affecting the ownership and use of 
land. But it remains for the state governments to implement 
the central government guidelines. Such implementation has 
varied widelv among the states. 

Landholding Categories 

India is a land of small farms, of peasants cultivating their 
ancestral lands mainly bv familv labor and. despite the spread 
of tractors in the 1980s., bv pairs of bullocks. About 50 percent 
of all operational holdings in 19S0 were less than one hectare 
in size. About 19 percent fell in the one-to-two hectare range. 
16 percent in the two-to-four hectare range, and 11 percent in 
the four-to-ten hectare range. Onlv 4 percent of the working 
farms encompassed ten or more hectares. 

Although farms are tvpicallv small throughout the country, 
the average size holding bv state ranges from about 0.5 hectare 
in Kerala and 0.75 hectare in Tamil Nadu to three hectares in 
Maharashtra and five hectares in Rajasthan. Factors influenc- 
ing this range include soils, topographs rainfall, rural popula- 
tion densitv. and thoroughness of land redistribution 
programs. 

Manv factors — historical., political, economic, and demo- 
graphic — have affected the development of the prevailing 
land-tenure status. The operators of most agricultural holdings 
possess vested rights in the land thev till, whether as full owners 
or as protected tenants. By the earlv 1990s, there were tenancy 
laws in all the states and union territories except Nagaland. 
Meghalava. and Mizoram. The laws provide for states to confer 
ownership on tenants., who can buv the land thev farm in 
return for fair pavment: states also oversee provision of security 



356 



3A 




Indira Gandhi Canal, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Indian Ministry of External Affairs 

of tenure and the establishing of fair rents. The implementa- 
tion of these laws has varied among the states. West Bengal, 
Karnataka, and Kerala, for example, have achieved more suc- 
cess than other states. The land tenure situation is compli- 
cated, and it has varied widely from state to state. There is, 
however, much less variation in the mid-1990s than in the 
postindependence period. 

Independent India inherited a structure of landholding that 
was characterized by heavy concentration of cultivable areas in 
the hands of relatively large absentee landowners (zamindars — 
see Glossary), the excessive fragmentation of small landhold- 
ings, an already growing class of landless agricultural workers, 
and the lack of any generalized system of documentary evi- 
dence of landownership or tenancy. Land was important as a 
status symbol; from one generation to the next, there was a ten- 
dency for an original family holding to be progressively subdi- 



387 



India: A Country Study 



vided, a situation that continued in the early 1990s. This 
phenomenon resulted in many landholdings that were too 
small to provide a livelihood for a family. Borrowing money 
against land was almost inevitable and frequently resulted in 
the loss of land to a local moneylender or large landowner, fur- 
ther widening the gap between large and small landholders. 
Moreover, inasmuch as landowners and moneylenders tended 
to belong to higher castes and petty owners and tenants to 
lower castes, land tenure had strong social as well as economic 
impact (see Varna, Caste, and Other Divisions; Settlement and 
Structure, ch. 5). 

By the early 1970s, after extensive legislation, large absentee 
landowners had, for all practical purposes, been eliminated; 
their rights had been acquired by the state in exchange for 
compensation in cash and government bonds. More than 20 
million former zamindar-system tenants had acquired occu- 
pancy rights to the land they tilled. Whereas previously the 
landlord collected rent from his tenants and passed on a por- 
tion of it as land revenue to the government, starting in the 
early 1970s, the state collected the rent directly from cultivators 
who, in effect, had become renters from the state. Most former 
tenants acquired the right to purchase the land they tilled, and 
payments to the state were spread out over ten to twenty years. 
Large landowners were divested not only of their cultivated 
land but also of ownership of forests, lakes, and barren lands. 
They were also stripped of various other economic rights, such 
as collection of taxes on sales of immovable property within 
their jurisdiction and collection of money for grazing privileges 
on uncultivated lands and use of river water. These rights also 
were taken over by state governments in return for compensa- 
tion. By 1980 more than 6 million hectares of waste, fallow, and 
other categories of unused land had been vested in state gov- 
ernments and, in turn, distributed to landless agricultural 
workers. 

Land Reform 

A major concern in rural India is the huge number of land- 
less or near-landless families, many of whom are wholly depen- 
dent on a few weeks of work at the peak planting and 
harvesting seasons. The number of landless rural families has 
grown steadily since independence, both in absolute terms and 
as a proportion of the population. In 1981 there were 195.1 
million rural workers: 55.4 million were agricultural laborers 



388 



Agriculture 



who depended primarily on casual farm work for a livelihood. 
In the early 1990s, the rural work force had grown to 242 mil- 
lion, of whom 73.7 million were classified as agricultural labor- 
ers. Approximately 33 percent of the employed rural workers 
were classified as casual wage laborers. 

Because of the large number of landless farmers and the fre- 
quent neglect of land by absentee landlords in the early years 
of independence, the principle that there should be a ceiling 
on the size of landholdings, depending on the crop planted 
and the quality of the land, was embodied in the First Five-Year 
Plan (FY 1951-55). An agricultural census was conducted to 
provide guidance in setting such ceilings. During the Second 
Five-Year Plan (FY 1956-60), most states legislated fixed ceil- 
ings, but there was little uniformity among the states; ceilings 
ranged from six to 132 hectares. Certain specialized branches 
of agriculture, such as horticulture, cattle breeding, and dairy 
farming, were usually exempted from ceilings. 

All the states instituted programs to force landowners to sell 
their over-the-ceiling holdings to the government at fixed 
prices; the states, in turn, were to redistribute the land to the 
landless. But adamant resistance, high costs, sloppy record 
keeping, and poor administration in general combined to 
weaken and delay this aspect of land reform. The delays in leg- 
islation allowed large landowners to circumvent the intent of 
the laws by spurious partitioning, sales, gifts to family members, 
and other methods of evading ceilings. Many exemptions were 
granted so that there was little surplus land. 

To ensure more uniformity in income, to combat evasion of 
the intent of the laws, and to secure more land for distribution 
to the landless, the central government in the 1970s pushed for 
greatly reduced ceilings. For a family of five, the central gov- 
ernment guidelines called for not more than 10.9 hectares of 
good, irrigated land suitable for double-cropping, not more 
than 10.9 hectares of land suited for one crop annually, and 
not more than 21.9 hectares for orchards. Exemptions were 
continued for land used as cocoa, coffee, tea, and rubber plan- 
tations; land held by official banks and other government 
units; and land held by agricultural schools and research orga- 
nizations. At the option of the states, land held by religious, 
educational, and charitable trusts also could be exempted. To 
protect the states from legal challenges to their land reform 
laws, the constitution was amended in 1974 to include in its 
Ninth Schedule the state laws that had been enacted in con- 



389 



India: A Country Study 

formance with national guidelines. Land reform laws enacted 
after 1974 also were included in the amendment. 

By the beginning of the 1990s, all states and union territo- 
ries, except Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, 
Mizoram, and Tripura, had passed ceiling laws to conform to 
central government guidelines. In Maharashtra, for example, 
the revised ceiling law that became effective in 1975 set upper 
limits at perennially irrigated land, 7.2 hectares; seasonally irri- 
gated land, 10.8 hectares; paddy land in an assured rainfall 
area, 14.6 hectares; and other dry land, 21.9 hectares. By the 
early 1980s, about 150,000 hectares had been declared surplus 
under this act, about 100,000 of which had been distributed to 
6,500 landless persons. A 1973 land reform amendment in 
Bihar set a range of ceilings on holdings for a family of five, 
from six to eighteen hectares depending on land quality, and 
offered an allowance for each additional family member, sub- 
ject to a maximum of one-and-one-half times the holding. 
Within five years, the Bihar government had acquired 94,000 
hectares of surplus land and had distributed 53,000 hectares to 
138,000 landless families. Success nationwide was limited. Of 
the 2.9 million hectares of land declared surplus, nearly 1.9 
million hectares had been distributed by the end of the seventh 
plan, leaving 1 million hectares still to be distributed as of early 
1993. 

By the early 1990s, nearly all the states had enacted legisla- 
tion aimed at the consolidation of each tiller's landholdings 
into one contiguous plot. Implementation was patchy and spo- 
radic, however. By the early 1980s, the work had been com- 
pleted only in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh 
and had begun in Orissa and Bihar. In most of the other states, 
nothing had been accomplished by the early 1990s. The Sixth 
Five-Year Plan (FY 1980-84) set a goal for the completion of 
the consolidation of holdings within ten years, which was not 
achieved. 

In order to protect tenants from exorbitant rents (often up 
to 50 percent of their produce), the states passed legislation to 
regulate rents. The maximum rate was fixed at levels not 
exceeding 20 to 25 percent of the gross produce in all states 
except Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab. The states also 
adopted various other measures for the protection of tenants, 
including moratoriums on evictions, minimum periods of ten- 
ure, and security of tenure subject to eviction on prescribed 
grounds only. 



390 



Agriculture 



By the early 1980s, most of the cultivated area had been sur- 
veyed and records of rights prepared. In most states, revenue 
assessment — the tax on land — against farmland had been 
revised upward in keeping with a rise in farm prices (see Agri- 
cultural Taxation, this ch.). In several states, steps were taken to 
associate village assemblies, or panchayat (see Glossary), with 
the maintenance of land records, the collection of land reve- 
nue, and the management of lands belonging to government; 
the results of these efforts have frequently been unsatisfactory. 

Economic Development 

Evolution of Policy 

The British colonial government of India did not pursue an 
active policy of agricultural development despite modest 
efforts to formulate a policy (see The British Raj, 1858-1947, 
ch. 1). One such effort was the appointment in 1926 of the 
Royal Commission on Agriculture, which made some recom- 
mendations for improving agriculture and promoting the wel- 
fare of the rural population. Most of the commission's recom- 
mendations were deferred because of the Great Depression of 
the 1930s. One outcome, however, was the establishment of the 
Imperial (later Indian) Council of Agricultural Research in 
1929. During World War II, disruptions in international trade 
also led the government to initiate the Grow More Food Cam- 
paign. The government adopted its first agricultural policy 
statement in the wake of famine in Bengal in 1943. The policy 
objectives included increased production of food grains, use of 
better methods of production, improved marketing, better 
prices for the producers, fair wages for agricultural labor, fair 
distribution of food, increased production of raw materials, 
and improvements in research and education. This statement 
was the basis of many of the policies adopted soon after inde- 
pendence, especially in the First Five- Year Plan, when the cen- 
tral government was committed to giving priority to 
agricultural production to increase the food supply in the 
country. 

The prolonged neglect of agriculture meant that there was 
almost no growth in the agricultural sector. From 1891 to 1946, 
output of all crops grew at 0.4 percent a year; the rate for food 
grains was only 0.1 percent per year. The land tenure system 
led to exploitative agrarian relations and stagnation (see Land 
Tenure, this ch.). Farmers had little incentive to invest, and 



391 



India: A Country Study 

despite great strides in foreign agricultural technology, Indian 
agricultural technology stagnated. Specifically, there were few 
improvements in seeds, agricultural implements, machines, or 
chemical fertilizers. 

At the time of independence in 1947, agriculture and allied 
sectors provided well over 70 percent of the country's employ- 
ment and more than 50 percent of the gross national product 
(GNP — see Glossary). Agricultural development was a key to a 
number of national goals, such as reducing rural poverty, pro- 
viding an adequate diet for all citizens, supplying agricultural 
raw materials for the textile industry and other industries, and 
expanding exports. In the mid-1960s, the goal of self-reliance 
was added to this list. The central government has played a pro- 
gressively more important role on the agricultural front by pro- 
viding overall leadership and coordination, as well as by 
providing a significant part of the financing for agricultural 
programs. However, the primary responsibility for the design 
and implementation of agricultural programs, in accordance 
with the constitution, remained with the states in the late twen- 
tieth century (see The Constitutional Framework, ch. 8). 

India's agricultural growth strategy after independence 
evolved over three distinct phases. In the first phase, roughly 
covering the period through the Second Five- Year Plan, agri- 
cultural growth rested on removing basic socioeconomic con- 
straints through land reform, change in the village power 
structure, reorganization of the rural poor into cooperatives, 
and better citizen participation in planning. The initial 
assumption was that changing the land tenure system by abol- 
ishing the zamindar system — a method of revenue collecting 
and landholding developed during the Mughal and British 
colonial periods — would stimulate agricultural output (see The 
Mughal Era; The British Empire in India, ch. 1). 

The second phase occurred during the Third Five-Year Plan 
(FY 1961-65). The continuing shortages of food in the 1960s 
and the consequent crises convinced planners that raising agri- 
cultural output, especially food grains, was essential for politi- 
cal stability and independence from foreign food aid. 
Self-sufficiency in food-grain production and development of 
an adequate buffer stock through procurement became clearly 
defined goals in the mid-1960s. Keeping in mind the variety of 
socioeconomic and agroclimatic differences, the government 
adopted an area-specific approach, and emphasized programs 



392 



Agriculture 



such as the Intensive Area Agricultural Programme and the 
Intensive Agricultural District Programme. 

The third phase is identified predominantly as the Green 
Revolution. This phase relied on better seeds, more water via 
irrigation, and improved quantity and quality of fertilizer dur- 
ing the Fourth Five-Year Plan (FY 1969-73), the Fifth Five-Year 
Plan (FY 1974-78), and the Sixth Five-Year Plan (FY 1980-84). 
The Green Revolution was successful in meeting the goals of 
self-sufficiency in food-grain production and adequate buffer 
stocks by the end of the 1970s. Production was more than 100 
million tons in 1978 and 1979. Imports were negligible, and 
the year-end buffer stocks from 1976-79 averaged more than 
17 million tons. After 1980 buffer stocks fell below 10 millions 
tons only once, in 1988. 

In the mid-1990s, the major goals of agricultural policy con- 
tinued to be self-sufficiency in food staples and adequate food 
supplies at affordable prices for consumers. Expanding cereal 
production continued to be a major objective because of the 
population growth rate of almost 2 percent per year. The bud- 
getary share of agriculture, together with irrigation and flood 
control projects, remained almost constant in the first six 
plans, varying between 21 percent and 24 percent. 

The Eighth Five-Year Plan (FY 1992-96), as conceived in the 
early 1990s, not only aimed at continued self-sufficiency in 
food production, but also included plans to generate surpluses 
of some agricultural commodities for export. It also aimed at 
spreading the Green Revolution to more regions of the coun- 
try with an emphasis on dryland farming. 

Development Programs 

Within the broad framework of policy, the government has 
undertaken a wide variety of programs in agriculture to build 
up the physical and information infrastructures necessary for 
sustained development. There are programs for the better- 
ment of the rural population; research, education, and exten- 
sion programs; irrigation development schemes; plans to 
increase the supply of agricultural inputs, such as seeds, fertiliz- 
ers, and pesticides; plans to change the institutional framework 
of land ownership; plans to improve agricultural financing; bet- 
ter marketing techniques; and plans to improve technology. 
These programs are administered, financed, and run by the 
central government and by the state governments, and both 



393 



India: A Country Study 

levels encourage private-sector development through direct or 
indirect programs. 

Some of the specialized programs in place in the 1990s were 
introduced during the Fifth Plan. Among them were the Small 
Farmers Development Agency, Minimum Needs Programme, 
Hill Area Development Programme, and Drought-Prone Areas 
Programme. In 1989 two other programs, the National Rural 
Employment Programme and the Rural Landless Employment 
Guarantee Programme, were merged into a single program 
called the Jawahar Employment Plan (Jawahar Rozgar Yojana; 
Jawahar in memory of Jawaharlal Nehru [1889-1964], India's 
first prime minister; rozgar means daily employment in Hindi; 
and yojana means project or plan). 

The Integrated Rural Development Programme, launched 
in FY 1978 and extended throughout India by FY 1980, is a 
self-employment program intended to raise the income-gener- 
ation capacity of target groups among the poor. The aim is to 
raise recipients above the poverty line by providing substantial 
opportunities for self-employment. During the seventh plan, 
the total expenditure under the program was Rs33.2 million 
(for value of the rupee — see Glossary), and Rs53.7 million of 
term credit was mobilized. Some 13 million new families partic- 
ipated, bringing total coverage under the program to more 
than 18 million families. These development programs have 
played an important role in increased agricultural production 
by educating farmers and providing them with financial and 
other inputs to increase yields. They have also alleviated some 
problems of the rural poor. However, further success has been 
limited by the lack of efficient administrative mechanisms, the 
limitation of resources, the magnitude of the task, and the lack 
of willingness to change the status quo. Many of the program 
results appear better on paper than the actual results in the 
field because of lack of implementation and poor monitoring. 

Research, Education, and Extension 

The central government's Department of Agricultural 
Research and Education was established in 1973 in the Ministry 
of Agriculture and Rural Development (later, the Ministry of 
Agriculture). The department is responsible for coordinating 
research and educational facilities in agriculture, animal hus- 
bandry, and fisheries. The department also provides support 
services to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (see 
Major Research Organization, ch. 6). 



394 



Sowing wheat in central India 
Courtesy Doranne Jacobson 



Higher education has also seen advances. India has twenty- 
eight agricultural universities, which include 164 colleges spe- 
cializing in agriculture, veterinary science, agricultural engi- 
neering, home science, fisheries, dairy technology, forestry, 
horticulture, sericulture, food science, and food-handling tech- 
nology. They are located through most of the states in India. 
One of them is a central university that has specialized exten- 
sion colleges in the seven northeastern states. The undergradu- 
ate student enrollment in the early 1990s was around 9,600 and 
there was a capacity for some 4,500 graduate students (see Col- 
leges and Universities, ch. 2). 

Agricultural, animal husbandry, and forestry research is con- 
ducted under the auspices of the Indian Council of Agricul- 
tural Research, central research institutes, and various 
commodity committees. The council had forty-six institutes in 
operation in 1992. India's largest such institute is the Indian 



395 



India: A Country Study 

Agricultural Research Institute, established in 1905 at Pusa, 
Bihar. Because of an earthquake at Pusa, the research institute 
moved to New Delhi in 1936. The institute was later accorded 
university status. 

In addition to these agricultural research and education 
institutions, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research also 
has a large network of organizations to disseminate agricultural 
technology information. In the mid-1990s, there were national 
centers used to demonstrate new crop varieties and production 
technologies in forty-eight districts throughout the country. 
There also were seventy nationwide coordinated research 
projects operating at 120 centers to test specific production 
technologies. 

Agricultural Extension 

After independence in 1947, the government's first step 
toward building an agricultural extension system was expan- 
sion of the World War II Grow More Food Campaign. Adminis- 
trators and extension workers were exhorted to convince 
cultivators of the gains in yields that could be obtained through 
the use of improved seeds, compost, farmyard manure, and 
better cultivation practices. Rural agents, often inundated with 
other assignments, had little or no training for extension work, 
however. Gains in yields were minimal, and India's leaders 
came to realize that converting millions of poor farmers to the 
use of new technologies was a colossal task. 

The Community Development Programme was inaugurated 
in 1952 to implement a systematic, integrated approach to 
rural development. The nation was divided into development 
blocks, each consisting of about 100 villages having popula- 
tions of 60,000 to 70,000 people. By 1962 the entire country 
was covered by more than 5,000 such blocks. The key person in 
the program was the village-level worker, who was responsible 
for transmitting to about ten villages not only farming technol- 
ogy, but also village uplift programs such as cooperation, adult 
literacy, health, and sanitation. Although each block was staffed 
with extension workers, the villagers themselves were expected 
to provide the initiative and much of the needed financial and 
labor resources, which they were not in a position to do or 
inclined to do. Although progress had been made by the early 
1960s, it was apparent that the program was spread too thin to 
bring about the hoped-for increase in agricultural production. 
Criticism of the program led to more specialized development 



396 



Agriculture 



projects, and some of the functions were taken up by local vil- 
lage bodies. There was only a negligible allocation for commu- 
nity development in the sixth plan, however, and the program 
was phased out in the early 1980s. 

The Intensive Agricultural District Programme, launched in 
five districts in 1960 by the central government in cooperation 
with the United States-based Ford Foundation, used a distinctly 
different approach to boosting farm yields. The program oper- 
ated under the premise that concentrating scarce inputs in the 
potentially most productive districts would increase farm-crop 
yield faster than would a wider but less concentrated distribu- 
tion of resources in less productive districts. Among these 
inputs were technical staff, fertilizers, improved seeds, and 
credit. Under the technical guidance of American cooperative 
specialists, the program placed unusual emphasis on organiza- 
tional structures and administrative arrangements. For the first 
time, modern technology was systematically introduced to 
Indian farmers. Within a decade, the program covered fifteen 
districts, 28,000 villages, and 1 million inhabitants. The Inten- 
sive Agricultural District Programme was thus a significant 
influence on the forthcoming Green Revolution. 

Irrigation 

Except in southeastern India, which receives most of its rain 
from the northeast monsoon in October and November, dry- 
land cultivators place their hopes for a harvest on the south- 
west monsoon, which usually reaches India in early June and by 
mid-July has extended to the entire country. There are great 
variations in the average amount of rainfall received by the var- 
ious regions — from too much for most crops in the eastern 
Himalayas to never enough in Rajasthan. Season-to-season vari- 
ations in rainfall are also great. The consequence is bumper 
harvests in some seasons, crop-searing drought in others. 
Therefore, the importance of irrigation cannot be overempha- 
sized. 

Irrigation has been a high priority in economic development 
since 1951; more than 50 percent of all public expenditures on 
agriculture have been spent on irrigation alone. The land area 
under irrigation expanded from 22.6 million hectares in FY 
1950 to 59 million hectares in FY 1990, an increase of 161 per- 
cent in four decades (see table 28, Appendix). This increase 
was about 33 percent of the estimated potential. The overall 
strategy has been to concentrate public investments in surface 



397 



India: A Country Study 



svstems. such as large dams, long canals, and other large-scale 
works requiring huge outlays of capital oyer a period of years, 
and in deep-well projects that also involve large capital outlavs. 
Shallow-well schemes and small surface-water projects, mainlv 
ponds (called tanks in India)., have been supported bv govern- 
ment credit but were otherwise installed and operated by pri- 
vate entrepreneurs. Roughly 42 percent of the net irrigated 
area in FY 1990 was from surface water sources. Tanks, step 
wells, and tube wells provided another 51 percent: the rest 
came from other sources. 

Between 1951 and 1990, nearly 1,350 large- and medium- 
sized irrigation works were started, and about 850 were com- 
pleted. The most ambitious of these projects was the Indira 
Gandhi Canal, with an anticipated completion date of close to 
1999. When completed, the Indira Gandhi Canal will be the 
world's longest irrigation canal. Besrinniner at the Hairke Bar- 
rage, a few kilometers below the confluence of the Sutlej and 
Beas rivers in western Punjab, it will run south-southwest for 
650 kilometers, terminating deep in Raj as than near Jaisalmer, 
close to the border with Pakistan. A dramatic change already 
had taken place in this hot and inhospitable wasteland bv the 
late 1980s. As a result, desert dwellers switched from raising 
goats and sheep to raising wheat, and outsiders flocked in to 
purchase six-hectare plots for the equivalent of USS3.000. 

Progress in irrigation has not been without problems. Large 
dams and long canals are costly and also highly visible indica- 
tors of progress: the political pressure to launch such projects 
was frequently irresistible. But because funds and technical 
expertise were in short supply many projects moved forward at 
a slow pace. The Indira Gandhi Canal project is a leading 
example. And the central government's transfer of huge 
amounts of water from Punjab to Haryana and Rajasthan, fre- 
quently cited as a source of grievance bv Sikhs in Punjab, con- 
tributed to the civil unrest in Punjab during the 1980s and 
earlv 1990s (see Political Issues, ch. 8: Insurgent Movements 
and External Subversion, ch. 10). 

Problems also have arisen as ground water supplies used for 
irrigation face depletion. Drawing water off from one area to 
irrigate another often leads to increased salinity in the supply 
area with resultant effects on crop production there. Some 
areas receiving water through irrigation are poorly managed or 
inadequately designed: the result often is too much water and 
water-logged fields incapable of production. To alleviate this 



398 



Agriculture 



problem, more emphasis is being placed on using irrigation 
water to spray fields rather than allowing it to flow through 
ditches. Furthermore, charges of corruption and mismanage- 
ment have been levied against government-operated facilities. 
Cases of bribery, maldistribution of water, and carelessness are 
frequently raised in the media. 

Another major problem has been the displacement of thou- 
sands of people, usually poor people, by large hydroelectric 
projects. Critics also claim that the projects are damaging to 
the ecology. Smaller projects and such traditional methods for 
irrigation as tanks and wells are seen as having less serious 
impact. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the debate between 
large-scale versus small-scale projects came to the fore because 
of the US$3 billion Sardar Sarovar project on the Narmada 
River. Sardar Sarovar, as conceived, was one of the world's larg- 
est hydroelectric and irrigation projects. Some 37,000 hectares 
of land in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra were 
slated to be submerged following the construction of some 
3,000 dams, 75,000 kilometers of canals, and an electric power 
generating capacity of 1,450 megawatts of power per year. 
Included among the 3,000 dams was the proposed 160-meter- 
high Sardar Sarovar Dam. In 1985 the World Bank (see Glos- 
sary) agreed to loan US$450 million for the project. Environ- 
mentalists in India and abroad, however, argued that the 
project was ecologically undesirable. In the face of this strong 
protest, the World Bank appointed a two-member team in 1991 
to review the project. Despite a negative review of the environ- 
mental impact by the team, World Bank funding and the 
project continued. By 1993, however, in the face of continued 
international protest as well as opposition and a call for a satya- 
graha (passive resistance — see Glossary) by villages in the 
affected areas, the central government cancelled the dam 
project loan. Work on the Sardar Sarovar project continues, 
however, with funds provided by the central government and 
the governments of the three states involved. 

Although India had the second largest irrigated area in the 
world, the area under assured irrigation or with at least mini- 
mal drainage is inadequate. The irrigation potential estimated 
to have been created by the early 1990s was about 82.8 million 
hectares. This amount includes the gross irrigated area plus 
the potential for double cropping provided by irrigation. 
There was a cumulative gap in irrigated land use of about 8.6 



399 



India: A Country Study 

million hectares until FY 1990, by which time the gap had 
decreased through improved land management. 

Seeds 

The central government established the National Seeds Cor- 
poration in 1963 and the State Farm Corporations of India in 
1969 to encourage production and distribution of certified 
seeds of various crops. Thirteen state seed corporations were 
established to arrange production and distribution of certified 
seeds. Production of breeder seed was organized by the Indian 
Council of Agricultural Research through interested breeders 
and scientists. The National Seeds Corporation and State Farm 
Corporations of India also produced breeder seeds. The avail- 
ability of breeder seeds increased eightfold during the 1980s, 
from 391.4 tons in FY 1981 to 3,213 tons in FY 1988. 

The production and availability of seeds has increased enor- 
mously since the late 1970s. The distribution of certified and 
quality seeds showed an increase from 140,000 tons in FY 1979 
to 568,000 tons in FY 1988. A buffer stock of seeds is main- 
tained by the National Seeds Corporation for the northeastern 
states and by the State Farm Corporations of India for the 
other states against such unforeseen contingencies as floods, 
droughts, and diseases. 

Fertilizer 

The rate of fertilizer consumption increased dramatically 
after independence, although it was still lower than in most 
other countries worldwide. India used only sixty-nine kilograms 
per hectare in 1989, ranking it fifty-sixth worldwide and below 
all its South Asian neighbors except Nepal. Fertilizer consump- 
tion increased from approximately 69,000 tons of nutrients in 
FY 1950 to 12.6 million tons in FY 1990, and was expected to be 
about 13.8 million tons in FY 1993. Punjab used the highest 
amount of fertilizer per hectare followed by Tamil Nadu. The 
use of fertilizers was high in Punjab and Harayana in the north 
because of adequate irrigation. In the south, other than in 
Tamil Nadu, consumption, especially in Andhra Pradesh and 
Kerala, was higher than the national average. The disparity in 
the use of fertilizers across states was decreasing, however. Cow 
dung is an important source of fertilizer — and fuel — in India. 
Statistics on its usage, however, are not available. 

The fertilizer subsidy has been growing since FY 1976. The 
initial subsidy was a response to the increase in the price of 



400 



Women at step well, Rajasthan 
Courtesy Janice Hyde 




crude oil by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting 
Countries (OPEC — see Glossary). The price increase led to a 
rise in the cost of naphtha, which in turn increased fertilizer 
prices. The fertilizer subsidy increased from Rs600 million in 
FY 1976 to Rs32 billion in FY 1988, to nearly Rs44 billion in FY 
1990. Further increases are expected as the decade progresses. 
Plans in 1992 to cut the subsidy by 40 percent were curtailed 
following heavy political opposition from the major farming 
states. 

Plant Protection and Pesticides 

The government has introduced integrated pest manage- 
ment at the central and state levels for purposes of plant pro- 
tection. Twenty-five central, integrated pest-management 
centers have been established in twenty-two states and one 
union territory for pest surveillance and monitoring, promo- 
tion of biocontrol methods of conservation, promotion of 
nonchemical methods of pest control, training of extension 
workers and farmers, and demonstration farms. 

The use of synthetic pesticides has increased steadily 
because of the spreading use of new high-yielding varieties of 
seeds and their greater vulnerability to plant pests and diseases. 
The sale of synthetic pesticides jumped from 8,620 tons in crop 
year 1960-61 to 65,000 tons in 1982-83 and 85,660 tons in 



401 



India: A Country Study 

1989-90. In 1960 only about 6 million hectares received chemi- 
cal pesticides, but by the early 1980s some 100 million hectares 
were being treated, and the growth in coverage continues in 
the 1990s. The rapid rise in the use of plant protection led to 
the enactment of the Insecticides Act of 1968 to regulate the 
import, sale, transport, distribution, and use of insecticides. 

Technology and Mechanization 

Despite the pervasive, large-scale use of draft animals 
throughout India, agricultural machinery and implements, 
tractors, in particular, have had an important place in increas- 
ing agricultural productivity. The stock of tractors increased 
from 8,600 in FY 1950 to 518,500 in FY 1982 and continued to 
grow rapidly throughout the 1980s (see table 29, Appendix). 
The number and sale of power tillers and combine harvesters 
produced and sold was small, with 4,678 tillers and 110 harvest- 
ers sold in FY 1988. There was a significant increase in the 
number of electric pumps and oil pump sets for irrigation dur- 
ing the 1980s. 

The production and use of machinery are hampered by the 
small size of many operational holdings. However, a number of 
improved agricultural implements are available for tilling, 
seeding and fertilizer application, weeding, harvesting, and 
threshing. The implements include moldboard plows, disc har- 
rows, cultivators, seed drills (more than 110,000 were sold 
annually in the early 1990s), and mechanical power threshers. 
These tools have the potential of increasing yields for all crops, 
but the adoption rate of improved machinery is low. The Cen- 
tral Institute of Agricultural Engineering at Bhopal, Madhya 
Pradesh, under the aegis of the Indian Council for Agricultural 
Research, is responsible for coordinating the manufacture and 
promotion of technology for small and marginal farmers. The 
government introduced an incentive scheme in 1990 to subsi- 
dize the cost of machinery by up to 50 percent to small and 
marginal farms. Additionally, farmers' agroservice centers are 
being established to provide custom service for improved 
implements and machinery. The eighth plan includes a major 
thrust for upgrading and adopting proven technology 

In a country with a large and growing labor force, too much 
mechanization in the short run could create fossil fuel short- 
ages as well as social and economic problems (see Size and 
Composition of the Work Force, ch. 6). There is, nevertheless, 
room for improvements in technology. Since FY 1983, there 



402 



Agriculture 



have been attempts to popularize improved animal-drawn agri- 
cultural implements and hand tools through demonstrations 
and subsidies to small and marginal farmers. 

Despite these advances in mechanization, most crops are still 
sown, transplanted, weeded, and harvested through labor- 
intensive human work. Most grains are harvested by teams of 
laborers wielding hand-forged iron sickles, binding up sheaves 
of grain, and carrying loads of sheaves on their heads to bul- 
lock carts to be transported to threshing floors. Teams of bul- 
locks are then driven over the sheaves to separate the grains 
from the stalks, and workers toss basketloads of grain into the 
air to separate the grain from the chaff. Lentils, a crucial part 
of the Indian diet, also are harvested through labor-intensive 
means. Groups of laborers squat down in fields for hours at a 
time, ripping out lentil plants at the root by hand. Machinery 
available to lentil farmers has proven difficult to use, and tradi- 
tional methods are preferred. 

Price Policy and Terms of Trade 

After independence, India's initial price policy could be 
characterized as serving the interests of the consumers, partic- 
ularly where food grains were concerned, and most of all in 
regard to wheat. Food prices were kept low to provide cheap 
food for urban consumers under the theory that a cheap and 
easy supply of wage goods — of which food grains formed the 
main component — would inhibit inflationary pressures on the 
economy. This policy, buttressed with imports under the 
United States Public Law 480 Food for Peace Program, kept 
prices at a low level during the late 1950s and early 1960s but 
did not provide incentives for Indian farmers to invest or 
increase production. The terms of trade vis-a-vis manufacturing 
were favorable to agriculture in FY 1959 and then on a par with 
other sectors for three years. Thereafter, when manufacturing 
prices went up faster than agricultural prices as a result of gov- 
ernment policy, terms of trade favored manufacturing and 
turned against the agricultural sector. This change led to a 
food crisis in the mid-1960s when agricultural production fell. 

From about 1965, the need to guarantee remunerative 
prices to farmers was stressed to ensure self-sufficiency in food- 
grain production as soon as possible. The Agricultural Prices 
Commission — in 1993 called the Commission for Agricultural 
Costs and Prices — was set up to advise the government on agri- 
cultural prices, keeping in view the interests of both the con- 



403 



India: A Country Study 

sumer and the producer. Of particular concern were prices for 
wheat, rice, coarse grains, pulses, sugarcane, oilseeds, cotton, 
and jute. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the commission was 
supplied with cost of production data, compiled through sam- 
ple surveys, to improve its effectiveness in setting prices. The 
commission was reasonably successful in providing remunera- 
tive prices for farmers. It used the price mechanism to increase 
the production of commodities in demand, such as oilseeds at 
the end of the 1980s, and to keep prices at a reasonable level 
for consumers. 

Production 
Crop Output 

The average rate of output growth since the 1950s has been 
more than 2.5 percent per year and was greater than 3 percent 
during the 1980s, compared with less than 1 percent per 
annum during the period from 1900 to 1950. Most of the 
growth in aggregate crop output was the result of an increase 
in yields, rather than an increase in the area under crops. The 
yield performance of crops has varied widely (see table 30, 
Appendix). 

The national growth rates mask variability in the perfor- 
mance of different states, but in the regions with the greatest 
increases three categories are discernible. The first category 
includes states or areas that have an exceptionally high agricul- 
tural growth rate — Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar 
Pradesh. The second is states or areas that have high growth 
rates, but not as high as the first category — Andhra Pradesh, 
Maharashtra, and Jammu and Kashmir. A third category has a 
lesser growth rate and includes Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, 
Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, eastern Uttar Pradesh, and 
West Bengal. These eight states, however, comprise 55 percent 
of the total food-grains area (see fig. 13). 

Some observers believe that the increase in productivity has 
been an important factor explaining the satisfactory growth of 
food-grain production since the mid-1960s. However, the gains 
in productivity remain confined to select areas. Between FY 
1960 and FY 1980, yields increased by 125.6 percent in North 
India (Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh). The 
increase in the other regions was much less: central India, 36 
percent; eastern, 22.7 percent; southern, 58.3 percent; and 
western India, 31.6 percent. The national average was nearly 



404 



Agriculture 



40.9 percent. Part of this disparity can be explained by the fact 
that during this period Punjab and Haryana were way ahead of 
other states in terms of irrigated area, intensity of irrigation, 
and intensity of cropping. Availability of irrigation is one of the 
crucial factors governing regional variations. 

As a result of a good monsoon during FY 1990, food grain 
production reached 176 million tons, 3 percent more than in 
FY 1989. The production of rice and wheat was 74.6 million 
and 54.5 million tons, respectively. Among the commercial 
crops, sugarcane and oilseeds reached production levels of 
240.3 million tons and 21.8 million tons, respectively. The 
increased production in FY 1990 was mainly the result of con- 
tinuing increases in yields for all the main crops — rice, wheat, 
pulses, and oilseeds. In the case of oilseeds and sugarcane, 
higher production was also the result of the increased number 
of hectares planted (see table 31, Appendix). 

The growth in food-grain production did not occur in a lin- 
ear trend, but as a series of spurts depending mostly on the 
weather, input availability, and price policy. Aggregate growth 
was composed of an even split between area expansion and 
yield growth before FY 1964. Since FY 1967, the contribution of 
growth in yields has become dominant and attests to the vigor 
with which agriculture has responded to the opportunities 
opened up by new seed, water, and fertilizer technology. 

Food-Grain Production 

Food grains include rice, wheat, corn (maize), coarse grains 
(sorghum and millet), and pulses (beans, dried peas, and len- 
tils). In FY 1990, approximately 127.5 million hectares were 
sown with food grains, about 75 percent of the total planted 
area. The total number of hectares increased by 31 percent 
over the forty-year period from FY 1950 to FY 1990. Most of this 
increase occurred in the 1950s; there was almost no change in 
the sown number of hectares through the 1980s. Around 33 
percent of cropland was given over to rice, about 29 percent to 
coarse grains, and the rest evenly divided between wheat and 
pulses. 

Rice, India's preeminent crop, is the staple food of the peo- 
ple of the eastern and southern parts of the country. Produc- 
tion increased from 53.6 million tons in FY 1980 to 74.6 million 
tons in FY 1990, a 39 percent increase over the decade. By FY 
1992, rice production had reached 111 million tons, second in 
the world only to China with its 182 million tons. Since 1950 



407 



India: A Country Study 

the increase has been more than 350 percent. Most of this 
increase was the result of an increase in yields; the number of 
hectares increased only 40 percent during this period. Yields 
increased from 1,336 kilograms per hectare in FY 1980 to 1,751 
kilograms per hectare in FY 1990. The per-hectare yield 
increased more than 262 percent between 1950 and 1992. 

Wheat production showed an 843 percent increase, from 
nearly 6.5 million tons in FY 1950 to 54.5 million tons in FY 
1990 to 56.7 million tons in FY 1992. Most of this greater pro- 
duction was the result of an increase in yields that went from 
663 kilograms per hectare in FY 1950 to 2,274 kilograms in FY 
1990. Along with the excellent performance in yields, 
improved wheat production resulted from an increase in the 
area planted from nearly 9.8 million hectares in FY 1950 to 24.0 
million hectares in FY 1990. 

Sorghum and millet, the principal coarse grains, are dryland 
crops most frequently grown as staples in central and western 
India. Corn and barley are staple foods grown mainly near and 
in the Himalayan region. As the result of increased yields, the 
production of coarse grains has doubled since 1950; there was 
hardly any change in the area sown for these grains. The pro- 
duction of pulses did not fare well, increasing by only 68 per- 
cent over the four decades. Land devoted to pulses increased 
by 28 percent, and yields were up by 30 percent. Pulses are an 
important source of protein in the vegetarian diet; the small 
improvement in production along with the increase in popula- 
tion meant a reduced availability of pulses per capita. 

Before the Green Revolution, coarse grains showed satisfac- 
tory rates of growth but afterward lost cultivated areas to wheat 
and rice, and their growth declined. The area sown with coarse 
grains increased from FY 1950 to FY 1970 by roughly 20 per- 
cent but declined subsequently up to the early 1990s. In FY 
1990 the area sown was 3 percent less than in FY 1950 and 20 
percent less than in FY 1970. The area sown with two coarse 
grains, jowar (barley) and bajra (millet), increased from FY 
1950 to FY 1970 and then declined during the 1970s and the 
1980s. The area sown with jowar increased from 15.6 million 
hectares in FY 1950 to 17.4 million hectares in FY 1970 and 
then decreased to 14.5 million hectares in FY 1990. The area 
sown with bajra increased from 9.0 million hectares in FY 1950 
to 12.9 million hectares in FY 1970 and stood at 10.4 million 
hectares in FY 1990. A similar pattern existed for other coarse 
grains. Overall, India's coarse-grain production increased from 



408 



Agriculture 



15.4 million tons in 1950 to 29 million tons in 1980 to 33.1 mil- 
lion tons in 1990 and 33.7 million tons in 1993. 

Oilseeds 

India in the mid-1990s has almost attained self-sufficiency in 
the production of oilseeds to extract vegetable oil, essential in 
the Indian diet. Peanuts, grown mainly as a rain-fed crop on 
part of the semiarid areas of western and southern India, 
account for the largest source of the nation's production of 
vegetable oils. The second-ranking source of vegetable oils in 
the early 1990s was rapeseed. Cottonseed, an important 
by-product of cotton fiber and once mostly fed to cattle, was 
another source of vegetable oils. Soybeans and sunflower seeds 
were relatively new as significant oilseeds, but their production 
increased rapidly in the 1980s. 

The production of oilseeds increased from 5.2 million tons 
in FY 1950 to 21.8 million tons in FY 1990. Specific information 
regarding area planted is not available for all oilseeds, but it 
increased in the 1980s, as did the yields. The growth of produc- 
tion before the mid-1970s was not adequate to meet the needs 
of the increasing population, and large quantities had to be 
imported from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, using scarce foreign 
exchange. 

Commercial Crops 

India is the largest producer of sugar in the world, harvest- 
ing 12 million tons in 1993, followed by Brazil's 9 million tons 
and China's 7 million tons. Sugar availability per capita 
increased from 4.7 kilograms per year in FY 1960 to 12.5 kilo- 
grams per year in FY 1990, following the more than fourfold 
increase in production from 57 million tons in FY 1950 to 240 
million tons in FY 1990. This increase in production was a 
result of the doubling of the yield per hectare and a doubling 
of the area sown with sugar. Imports of sugar were negligible in 
FY 1992 and FY 1993. However, in the FY 1995 budget presenta- 
tion to the Lok Sabha in March 1995, Minister of Finance Man- 
mohan Singh said it was necessary to supplement the public 
distribution system with "necessary imports of sugar." 

Raw cotton is the most important nonfood commodity pro- 
duced on India's farms. Cotton was an important export crop 
in the 1950s, but thereafter it provided the raw material for 
India's textile industry, which grew greatly to meet the needs of 
an expanding population (see Manufacturing, ch. 6). Cotton 



409 



India: A Country Study 

fabrics found an expanding international market in the 1980s 
and earned valuable foreign exchange. The foreign exchange 
earned from raw cotton, cotton yarn, and fabrics of all textile 
materials increased from US$163 million in FY 1960 to US$1.4 
billion in FY 1980 to nearly US$3.9 billion in FY 1990 and 
US$3.8 billion by FY 1992. Cotton production increased from 
600,000 tons in FY 1950 to nearly 1.7 million tons in FY 1990. 
These improvements largely resulted from increased yields, as 
there was little increase in the sown area devoted to cotton. 

Raw jute is second only to cotton as a farm-produced indus- 
trial raw material. Before partition in 1947, India was the 
world's main supplier of jute and jute goods used as packaging 
material. As a result of the partition of India and Pakistan, the 
main jute growing area was in East Pakistan (eastern Bengal, 
after 1971 the independent nation of Bangladesh), and the fac- 
tories manufacturing jute goods were in West Bengal, which 
remained part of India after partition. Jute also had been 
India's main source of export earnings. As a result, there was a 
concerted effort to increase raw jute production. The area 
sown with jute increased from 571,000 hectares in FY 1950 to 
nearly 1.2 million hectares in FY 1985 but then decreased to 
692,000 hectares in FY 1988. Yields increased steadily from 
1,040 kilograms per hectare in FY 1950 to 1,803 kilograms per 
hectare in FY 1990. These two factors combined to more than 
double jute production from 595 million tons in FY 1950 to 1.4 
billion tons in FY 1990, with a maximum production of nearly 2 
billion tons in FY 1985. Because technological changes in pack- 
aging reduced the worldwide demand for jute, production in 
the early 1990s was mainly for the domestic market. In FY 1990, 
jute provided less than 1 percent of export earnings. 

The Green Revolution 

The introduction of high-yielding varieties of seeds after 
1965 and the increased use of fertilizers and irrigation are 
known collectively as the Green Revolution, which provided 
the increase in production needed to make India self-sufficient 
in food grains. The program was started with the help of the 
United States-based Rockefeller Foundation and was based on 
high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and other grains that had 
been developed in Mexico and in the Philippines. Of the high- 
yielding seeds, wheat produced the best results. Production of 
coarse grains — the staple diet of the poor — and pulses — the 



410 



Mechanized threshing, Uttar Pradesh 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

main source of protein — lagged behind, resulting in reduced 
per capita availability. 

The total area under the high-yielding-varieties program was 
a negligible 1.9 million hectares in FY 1960. Since then growth 
has been spectacular, increasing to nearly 15.4 million hectares 
by FY 1970, 43.1 million hectares by FY 1980, and 63.9 million 
hectares by FY 1990. The rate of growth decreased significantly 
in the late 1980s, however, as additional suitable land was not 
available (see table 32, Appendix). 

The major benefits of the Green Revolution were experi- 
enced mainly in northern and northwestern India between 
1965 and the early 1980s; the program resulted in a substantial 
increase in the production of food grains, mainly wheat and 
rice. Food-grain yields continued to increase throughout the 
1980s, but the dramatic changes in the years between 1965 and 
1980 were not duplicated. By FY 1980, almost 75 percent of the 
total cropped area under wheat was sown with high-yielding 
varieties. For rice the comparable figure was 45 percent. In the 
1980s, the area under high-yielding varieties continued to 
increase, but the rate of growth overall was slower. The eighth 
plan aimed at making high-yielding varieties available to the 
whole country and developing more productive strains of 
other crops. 

The Green Revolution created wide regional and interstate 
disparities. The plan was implemented only in areas with 
assured supplies of water and the means to control it, large 
inputs of fertilizers, and adequate farm credit. These inputs 
were easily available in at least parts of the states of Punjab, 
Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh; thus, yields increased 



411 



India: A Country Study 



most in these states. In other states, such as Andhra Pradesh 
and Tamil Nadu, in areas where these inputs were not assured, 
the results were limited or negligible, leading to considerable 
variation in crop yields within these states. The Green Revolu- 
tion also increased income disparities: higher income growth 
and reduced incidence of poverty were found in the states 
where yields increased the most and lower income growth and 
little change in the incidence of poverty in other states. 

Livestock and Poultry 

A large number of farmers depend on livestock for their live- 
lihood. In addition to supplying milk, meat, eggs, and hides, 
animals, mainly bullocks, are the major source of power for 
both farmers and drayers. Thus, animal husbandry plays an 
important role in the rural economy. The gross value of output 
from this sector was Rs358 billion in FY 1989, an amount that 
constituted about 25 percent of the total agricultural output of 
Rsl.4 trillion. 

In FY 1992, India had approximately 25 percent of the 
world's cattle, with a collective herd of 193 million head. India 
also had 110 million goats, 75 million water buffalo, 44 million 
sheep, and 10 million pigs. Milk production in FY 1990 was esti- 
mated to have reached 53.5 million tons, and egg production 
had reached a level of 23.3 billion eggs. Dairy farming pro- 
vided supplementary employment and an additional source of 
income to many small and marginal farmers. The National 
Dairy Development Board was established in 1965 under the 
auspices of Operation Flood at Anand, in Gujarat, to promote, 
plan, and organize dairy development through cooperatives; to 
provide consultations; and to set up dairy plants, which were 
then turned over to the cooperatives. There were more than 
63,000 Anand-style dairy cooperative societies with some 7.5 
million members in the early 1990s. The milk produced and 
sold by these farmers brought Rs320 million a day, or more 
than RslO trillion a year. The increase in milk production per- 
mitted India to end imports of powdered milk and milk-related 
products. In addition, 30,000 tons of powdered milk were 
exported annually to neighboring countries. 

Operation Flood, the world's largest integrated dairy devel- 
opment program, attempted to establish linkages between 
rural milk producers and urban consumers by organizing 
farmer-owned and -managed dairy cooperative societies. In the 
early 1990s, the program was in its third phase and was receiv- 



412 



Agriculture 



ing financial assistance from the World Bank and commodity 
assistance from the European Economic Community. At that 
time, India had more than 64,000 dairy cooperative societies, 
with close to 7.7 million members. These cooperatives estab- 
lished a daily processing capacity of 15.5 million liters of whole 
milk and 727 tons of milk powder. 

Forestry 

Some 50 million hectares, about 17 percent of India's land 
area, were regarded as forestland in the early 1990s. In FY 1987, 
however, actual forest cover was 64 million hectares. However, 
because more than 50 percent of this land was barren or brush- 
land, the area under productive forest was actually less than 35 
million hectares, or approximately 10 percent of the country's 
land area. The growing population's high demand for forest 
resources continued the destruction and degradation of forests 
through the 1980s, taking a heavy toll on the soil. An estimated 
6 billion tons of topsoil were lost annually. However, India's 0.6 
percent average annual rate of deforestation for agricultural 
and nonlumbering land uses in the decade beginning in 1981 
was one of the lowest in the world and on a par with Brazil. 

Many forests in the mid-1990s are found in high-rainfall, 
high-altitude regions, areas to which access is difficult. About 
20 percent of total forestland is in Madhya Pradesh; other 
states with significant forests are Orissa, Maharashtra, and 
Andhra Pradesh (each with about 9 percent of the national 
total); Arunachal Pradesh (7 percent); and Uttar Pradesh (6 
percent). The variety of forest vegetation is large: there are 600 
species of hardwoods, sal (Shorea robusta) and teak being the 
principal economic species. 

Conservation has been an avowed goal of government policy 
since independence. Afforestation increased from a negligible 
amount in the first plan to nearly 8.9 million hectares in the 
seventh plan. The cumulative area afforested during the 1951- 
91 period was nearly 17.9 million hectares. However, despite 
large-scale tree planting programs, forestry is one arena in 
which India has actually regressed since independence. Annual 
fellings at about four times the growth rate are a major cause. 
Widespread pilfering by villagers for firewood and fodder also 
represents a major decrement. In addition, the forested area 
has been shrinking as a result of land cleared for farming, 
inundations for irrigation and hydroelectric power projects, 



413 



India: A Country Study 



and construction of new urban areas, industrial plants, roads, 
power lines, and schools. 

India's long-term strategy for forestry development reflects 
three major objectives: to reduce soil erosion and flooding; to 
supply the growing needs of the domestic wood products 
industries; and to supply the needs of the rural population for 
fuelwood, fodder, small timber, and miscellaneous forest pro- 
duce. To achieve these objectives, the National Commission on 
Agriculture in 1976 recommended the reorganization of state 
forestry departments and advocated the concept of social for- 
estry. The commission itself worked on the first two objectives, 
emphasizing traditional forestry and wildlife activities; in pur- 
suit of the third objective, the commission recommended the 
establishment of a new kind of unit to develop community for- 
ests. Following the leads of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, a num- 
ber of other states also established community-based forestry 
agencies that emphasized programs on farm forestry, timber 
management, extension forestry, reforestation of degraded for- 
ests, and use of forests for recreational purposes. 

Such socially responsible forestry was encouraged by state 
community forestry agencies. They emphasized such projects 
as planting wood lots on denuded communal cattle-grazing 
grounds to make villages self-sufficient in fuelwood, to supply 
timber needed for the construction of village houses, and to 
provide the wood needed for the repair of farm implements. 
Both individual farmers and tribal communities were also 
encouraged to grow trees for profit. For example, in Gujarat, 
one of the more aggressive states in developing programs of 
socioeconomic importance, the forestry department distrib- 
uted 200 million tree seedlings in 1983. The fast-growing euca- 
lyptus is the main species being planted nationwide, followed 
by pine and poplar. 

The role of forests in the national economy and in ecology 
was further emphasized in the 1988 National Forest Policy, 
which focused on ensuring environmental stability, restoring 
the ecological balance, and preserving the remaining forests. 
Other objectives of the policy were meeting the need for fuel- 
wood, fodder, and small timber for rural and tribal people 
while recognizing the need to actively involve local people in 
the management of forest resources. Also in 1988, the Forest 
Conservation Act of 1980 was amended to facilitate stricter 
conservation measures. A new target was to increase the forest 
cover to 33 percent of India's land area from the then-official 



414 



Building a haystack, Uttar 
Pradesh 

Courtesy Robert L. Worden 




estimate of 23 percent. In June 1990, the central government 
adopted resolutions that combined forest science with social 
forestry, that is, taking the sociocultural traditions of the local 
people into consideration. 

Since the early 1970s, as they realized that deforestation 
threatened not only the ecology but their livelihood in a variety 
of ways, people have become more interested and involved in 
conservation. The best known popular activist movement is the 
Chipko Movement, in which local women decided to fight the 
government and the vested interests to save trees. The women 
of Chamoli District, Uttar Pradesh, declared that they would 
embrace — literally "to stick to" (chipkna in Hindi) — trees if a 
sporting goods manufacturer attempted to cut down ash trees 
in their district. Since initial activism in 1973, the movement 
has spread and become an ecological movement leading to 
similar actions in other forest areas. The movement has slowed 
down the process of deforestation, exposed vested interests, 
increased ecological awareness, and demonstrated the viability 
of people power. 

Fishing 

Fish production has increased more than fivefold since inde- 
pendence. It rose from only 800,000 tons in FY 1950 to 4.1 mil- 




415 



India: A Country Study 

lion tons in the early 1990s. Special efforts have been made to 
promote extensive and intensive inland fish farming, modern- 
ize coastal fisheries, and encourage deep-sea fishing through 
joint ventures. These efforts led to a more than fourfold 
increase in coastal fish production from 520,000 tons in FY 
1950 to 2.4 million tons in FY 1990. The increase in inland fish 
production was even more dramatic, increasing almost eight- 
fold from 218,000 tons in FY 1950 to 1.7 million tons in FY 
1990. The value of fish and processed fish exports increased 
from less than 1 percent of the total value of exports in FY 1960 
to 3.6 percent in FY 1993. 

The important marine fish in the mid-1990s are mackerel, 
sardines, Bombay duck, shark, ray, perch, croaker, carangid, 
sole, ribbonfish, whitebait, tuna, silverbelly, prawn, and cuttle- 
fish. The main freshwater fish are carp and catfish; the main 
brackish-water fish are hilsa (a variety of shad), and mullet. 

Great potential exists for expanding the nation's fishing 
industry. India's exclusive economic zone, stretching 200 nauti- 
cal miles into the Indian Ocean, encompasses more than 2 mil- 
lion square kilometers. In the mid-1980s, only about 33 percent 
of that area was being exploited. The potential annual catch 
from the area has been estimated at 4.5 million tons. In addi- 
tion to this marine zone, India has about 1.4 million hectares 
of brackish water available for aquaculture, of which only 
60,000 hectares were being farmed in the early 1990s; about 1.6 
million hectares of freshwater lakes, ponds, and swamps; and 
nearly 64,000 kilometers of rivers and streams. 

In 1990 there were 1.7 million full-time fishermen, 1.3 mil- 
lion part-time fishermen, and 2.3 million occasional fisher- 
men, many of whom worked as saltmakers, ferrymen, or 
seamen, or operated boats for hire. In the early 1990s, the fish- 
ing fleet consisted of 180,000 traditional craft powered by sails 
or oars, 26,000 motorized traditional craft, and some 34,000 
mechanized boats. 

Fisheries research and training institutions are supported by 
central and state governments that deserve much of the credit 
for the expansion and improvements in the Indian fishing 
industry. The principal fisheries research institutions, all of 
which operate under the Indian Council of Agricultural 
Research, are the Central Institute of Marine Fisheries 
Research at Kochi (formerly Cochin), Kerala; the Central 
Inland Fisheries Institute at Barrackpore, West Bengal; and the 
Central Institute of Fisheries Technology at Willingdon Island 



416 



Agriculture 



near Kochi. Most fishery training is provided by the Central 
Institute for Fishery Education in Bombay (or Mumbai in 
Marathi), which has ancillary institutions in Barrackpore, Agra 
(Uttar Pradesh), and Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh). The Cen- 
tral Fisheries Corporation in Calcutta is instrumental in bring- 
ing about improvements in fishing methods, ice production, 
processing, storing, marketing, and constructing and repairing 
fishing vessels. Operating under a 1972 law, the Marine Prod- 
ucts Export Authority, headquartered in Kochi, has made sev- 
eral market surveys abroad and has been instrumental in 
introducing and enforcing hygiene standards that have gained 
for Indian fishery export products a reputation for cleanliness 
and quality. 

The implementation of two programs for inland fisheries — 
establishing fish farmers' development agencies and the 
National Programme of Fish Seed Development — has led to 
encouragingly increased production, which reached 1.5 mil- 
lion tons during FY 1990, up from 0.9 million tons in FY 1984. 
A network of 313 fish farmers' development agencies was func- 
tioning in 1992. Under the National Programme of Fish Seed 
Development, forty fish-seed hatcheries were commissioned. 
Fish-seed production doubled from 5 billion fry in FY 1983 to 
10 billion fry in FY 1989. A new program using organic waste 
for aquaculture was started in FY 1986. Inland fish production 
as a percent of total fish production increased from 36 percent 
in FY 1980 to 40 percent by FY 1990. 

Apart from four main fishing harbors — Kochi (Kerala), 
Madras (Tamil Nadu), Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), 
and Roychowk in Calcutta (West Bengal) — twenty-three minor 
fishing harbors and ninety-five fish-landing centers are desig- 
nated to provide landing and berthing facilities to fishing craft. 
The harbors at Vishakhapatnam, Kochi, and Roychowk were 
completed by 1980; the one at Madras was completed in the 
1980s. A major fishing harbor was under construction at Sas- 
soon Dock in Bombay in the early 1990s, as were thirteen addi- 
tional minor fishing harbors and eighteen small landing 
centers. By early 1990, there were 225 deep-sea fishing vessels 
operating in India's exclusive economic zone. Of these, 165 
were owned by Indian shipping companies, and the rest were 
chartered foreign fishing vessels. 

The government provides subsidies to poor fishermen so 
that they can motorize their traditional craft to increase the 
range and frequency of operation, with a consequent increase 



417 



India: A Country Study 

in the catch and earnings. A total of about 26,171 traditional 
craft had been motorized under the program by 1992. 

The banning of trawling by chartered foreign vessels and the 
speedy motorization of traditional fishing craft in the 1980s led 
to a quantum jump in marine fish production in the late 1980s. 
The export of marine products rose from 97,179 tons (Rs531 
billion) in FY 1987 to 210,800 tons (Rsl7.4 trillion) in FY 1992, 
making India one of the world's leading seafood exporting 
nations. This achievement was largely a result of significant 
advancements in India's freezing facilities since the 1960s, 
advancements that enabled India's seafood products to meet 
international standards. Frozen shrimp, a high-value item, has 
become the dominant seafood export. Other significant export 
items are frozen frog legs, frozen lobster tails, dried fish, and 
shark fins, much of which is exported to seafood-loving Japan. 
During the eighth plan, marine products were identified as 
having major export potential. 

There are several specialized institutes that train fishermen. 
The Central Institute of Fisheries Nautical and Engineering 
Training in Kochi instructs operators of deep-sea fishing vessels 
and technicians for shore establishments. It has facilities in 
Madras and Vishakhapatnam for about 500 trainees a year. The 
Integrated Fisheries Project, also headquartered in Kochi, was 
established for the processing, popularizing, and marketing of 
unusual fish. Another training organization, the Central Insti- 
tute of Coastal Engineering for Fisheries in Bangalore, has 
done techno-economic feasibility studies on locations of fish- 
ing harbor sites and brackish-water fish farms. 

To improve returns to fishermen and provide better prod- 
ucts for consumers, several states have organized marketing 
cooperatives for fishermen. Nevertheless, most traditional fish- 
ermen rely on household members or local fish merchants for 
the disposal of their catches. In some places, marketing is car- 
ried on entirely by fisherwomen who carry small quantities in 
containers on their heads to nearby places. Good wholesale or 
retail markets are rare. 

Agricultural Credit 

Credit institutions serving agricultural-sector needs devel- 
oped in three phases. In the first phase, which lasted from 1947 
to 1969, cooperative agencies were the primary vehicle provid- 
ing credit. In the second phase, after nationalization of banks 
in 1969, commercial banks were assigned a role in providing 



418 




Fishing boats, Bombay, Maharashtra 
Courtesy Bernice Huffman Collection, Library of Congress 

agricultural credit but were supplementary to cooperatives (see 
Fiscal Administration, ch. 6). In the last phase starting in 1975, 
regional rural banks were established to provide credit. In the 
1990s, agricultural credit is provided through a multiagency 
approach in the form of cooperatives, commercial banks, and 
regional rural banks. These institutions have gradually ensured 
that credit reaches the most remote agricultural and rural 
areas. 

Since the inception of central economic planning in 1950, 
the government has favored cooperative societies as a channel 
for providing credit and as a means of broadening the experi- 
ence of villagers in such activities as marketing, community 
farming, and consumer purchasing. Credit societies were the 
first to be established and continue to be the most extensive 
and important group of cooperatives. Of the roughly 250,000 
cooperatives in India in 1980, about 100,000 were primarily 



419 



India: A Country Study 

agricultural credit cooperatives. By the late 1980s, because 
regional rural banks were doing more lending, the number of 
agricultural credit cooperatives had decreased to 87,300. By 
1988 there were 93,000 primary agricultural credit societies 
operating in rural areas, with a membership of 89.8 million. 
The societies aimed for universal membership in order that 
poorer members of society could join cooperatives and use 
their services. Total loans advanced by such societies amounted 
to nearly Rs36.9 billion during FY 1987. These agricultural 
credit societies had a share capital of about RslO.l billion at the 
end of June 1988. 

Cooperatives played a significant role in the production and 
distribution of agricultural inputs. For example, during FY 
1988 nearly 3.5 million tons, representing more than 33 per- 
cent of total fertilizer (less cow dung), were distributed 
through a network of 76,000 cooperative retail outlets. Cooper- 
atives also distributed other inputs, such as seeds, pesticides, 
and agricultural implements. 

The overall control of rural credit for the development of 
agriculture and the rural sector is under the control of the 
National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development, which 
was established in July 1980. It was chartered to oversee the 
workings of regional rural banks, and in the mid-1990s was 
slated to establish a rural infrastructure development fund to 
provide loans to state governments and state-owned corpora- 
tions to enable completion of irrigation, soil conservation, 
watershed management, and other rural infrastructure 
projects in progress. By June 1991, there were 14,522 regional 
rural banks in India. 

Public-sector banks, including commercial and regional 
rural banks, increased their activities in the countryside after 
the nationalization of banks. Many bank branches were opened 
in rural areas. One indicator of increased availability of credit 
through public-sector banks was the increase in the number of 
accounts. The number went from 164,000, with outstanding 
loans of Rsl.6 billion, to nearly 21.8 million accounts, with an 
outstanding balance of nearly Rsl65.2 billion in March 1990. 

In economic terms, the growth in credit supply has been sat- 
isfactory, but the growth in deposits has not kept pace with 
credit supply and there has been a high rate of loan defaults. 
Field-level rural financial institutions have increased, however, 
even though there are fewer primary agricultural credit societ- 
ies. The large increase in the number of branches of commer- 



420 



Agriculture 



rial banks in the rural areas and the expansion of regional 
rural banks led to the reduction. 

Agricultural Taxation 

Agricultural property and some agricultural income were 
being taxed in the early 1990s, but the revenue from these 
taxes was negligible. In the early 1950s, however, land revenue 
agricultural property taxes were a significant form of govern- 
ment income, providing just under 10 percent of the tax reve- 
nue of the central, state, and union territory governments. At 
the end of the 1980s, that proportion was less than 1 percent 
because land revenue had been fixed. For instance, land reve- 
nue was an average of Rs28 per hectare in Kerala and Rs23 per 
hectare in Uttar Pradesh, the two states with the highest assess- 
ment rates. The national average was Rs 16.50 per hectare. Agri- 
cultural property also was subject to stamp duties and 
registration fees. (All property transactions have to be made on 
official, stamped forms, and registration fees have to be paid to 
register transactions.) No data were available in early 1993 on 
the proportion of these fees that came from the agricultural 
sector, but a taxation inquiry committee put it at approximately 
20 percent. Between 1950 and 1990, only about 1.5 percent of 
the total taxes collected by the central, state, and union terri- 
tory governments came from the agricultural sector. Overall, 
the impact of tax on agricultural property was negligible but 
was a likely target for economic reform in the mid-1990s. 

Since the 1950s, agricultural income tax has been collected 
as a federal tax, but it has been levied only on income from 
plantations. All other agricultural income has been exempt 
from tax. The total collection from this tax was less than 1 per- 
cent of the total taxes collected by the central, state, and union 
territory governments in FY 1950; in the late 1980s, it had 
dropped below 0.3 percent. 

Marketing, Trade, and Aid 

Marketing and Marketing Services 

The agricultural marketing system operates primarily 
according to the forces of supply and demand in the private 
sector. Government intervention is limited to protecting the 
interests of producers and consumers and promoting orga- 
nized marketing of agricultural commodities. In 1991 there 



421 



India: A Country Study 

were 6,640 regulated markets to which the central government 
provided assistance in the establishment of infrastructure and 
in setting up rural warehouses. Various central government 
organizations are involved in agricultural marketing, including 
the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, the Food 
Corporation of India, the Cotton Corporation of India, and the 
Jute Corporation of India. There also are specialized market- 
ing boards for rubber, coffee, tea, tobacco, spices, coconut, oil- 
seeds, vegetable oil, and horticulture. 

A network of cooperatives at the local, state, and national 
levels assist in agricultural marketing. The major commodities 
handled are food grains, jute, cotton, sugar, milk, and areca 
nuts. Established in 1958 as the apex of the state marketing fed- 
erations, the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Fed- 
eration of India handles much of the domestic and most of the 
export marketing for its member organizations. 

Large enterprises, such as cooperative sugar factories, spin- 
ning mills, and solvent-extraction plants mostly handle their 
own marketing operations independently. Medium- and small- 
sized enterprises, such as rice mills, oil mills, cotton ginning 
and pressing units, and jute baling units, mostly are affiliated 
with cooperative marketing societies. 

In the late 1980s, there were some 2,400 agroprocessing 
units in the cooperative sector. Of all the cooperative agropro- 
cessing industries, cooperative sugar factories achieved the 
most notable success. The number of licensed or registered 
units remained at 232, of which 211 had been installed by 
March 1988. During the October 1987-September 1988 sugar 
season, 196 cooperative sugar factories were in production. 
They produced nearly 5.3 million tons of sugar, accounting for 
about 57.5 percent of the country's total production of 9.2 mil- 
lion tons. The National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Facto- 
ries rendered advice to member cooperatives on technical 
improvement, financial management, raw materials develop- 
ment, and inventory control. 

In the early 1990s, the cooperative marketing structure com- 
prised 6,777 primary marketing societies: 2,759 general-pur- 
pose societies at the mandi (wholesale market) level and 4,018 
special commodities societies for oilseeds and other such com- 
modities. There were also 161 district or central societies cover- 
ing nearly all important mandis in the country and twenty-nine 
general-purpose state cooperative marketing federations. The 
total value of agricultural produce marketed by cooperatives 



422 



Agriculture 



amounted to about Rs54.2 billion in FY 1988, compared with 
Rsl8 billion in FY 1979. The total value of food grains handled 
by marketing cooperatives increased from Rs5 billion in FY 
1979 to about Rsll.3 billion in FY 1986. 

The Ministry of Agriculture's Directorate of Marketing and 
Inspection is responsible for administering federal statutes con- 
cerned with the marketing of agricultural produce. Another 
function is market research. The directorate also works closely 
with states to provide agricultural marketing services that con- 
stitutionally come under state purview. 

Under the Agricultural Produce (Grading and Marketing) 
Act of 1937, more than forty primary commodities are compul- 
sorily graded for export and voluntarily graded for internal 
consumption. Although the regulation of commodity markets 
is a function of state government, the Directorate of Marketing 
and Inspection provides marketing and inspection services and 
financial aid down to the village level to help set up commodity 
grading centers in selected markets. 

By the 1980s, warehouses for storing agricultural produce 
and farm supplies played an increasing role in government 
price support and price control programs and in distributing 
farm commodities and farm supplies. Because the public ware- 
houses issue a receipt to the owners of stored goods on which 
loans can be raised, warehouses are also becoming important 
in agricultural finance. The Central Warehousing Corporation, 
an entity of the central government, operates warehouses at 
major points within its jurisdictions, and cooperatives operate 
warehouses in towns and villages. The growth of the warehous- 
ing system has resulted in a decline in weather damage to pro- 
duce and in loss to rodents and other pests. 

Most agricultural produce is sold by farmers in the private 
sector to moneylenders (to whom the farmer may be indebted) 
or to village traders. Produce is sold in various ways. It might be 
sold at a weekly village market in the farmer's own village or in 
a neighboring village. If these outlets are not available, then 
produce might be sold at irregularly held markets in a nearby 
village or town, or in the mandi Farmers also can sell to traders 
who come to the work site. 

The government has adopted various measures to improve 
agricultural marketing. These steps include establishing regu- 
lated markets, constructing warehouses, grading and standard- 
izing produce, standardizing weights and measures, and 
providing information on agricultural prices over All India 



423 



India: A Country Study 

Radio (Akashvani), the national radio network (see Radio, ch. 
6; The Media, ch. 8). 

The government's objective of providing reasonable prices 
for basic food commodities is achieved through the Public Dis- 
tribution System, a network of 350,000 fair-price shops that are 
monitored by state governments. Channeling basic food com- 
modities through the Public Distribution System serves as a 
conduit for reaching the truly needy and as a system for keep- 
ing general consumer prices in check. More than 80 percent of 
the supplies of grain to the Public Distribution System is pro- 
vided by Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. 

The Food Corporation of India was established in 1965 as 
the public-sector marketing agency responsible for implement- 
ing government price policy through procurement and public 
distribution operations. It was intended to secure for the gov- 
ernment a commanding position in the food-grain trade. By 
1979 the corporation was operating in all states as the sole 
agent of the central government in food-grain procurement. 
The corporation uses the services of state government agencies 
and cooperatives in its operations. 

The Food Corporation of India is the sole repository of food 
grains reserved for the Public Distribution System. Food grains, 
primarily wheat and rice, account for between 60 and 75 per- 
cent of the corporation's total annual purchases. Food-grain 
procurement was 8.9 million tons in FY 1971, 13.0 million tons 
in FY 1981, and 17.8 million tons in FY 1991. Food grains sup- 
plied through the Public Distribution System amounted to 7.8 
million tons in FY 1971, 13.0 million tons in FY 1981, and 17.0 
million tons in FY 1991. The corporation has functioned effec- 
tively in providing price supports to farmers through its pro- 
curement scheme and in keeping a check on large price 
increases by providing food grains through the Public Distribu- 
tion System. 

External Trade 

Agricultural exports were 44 percent of total exports in FY 
1960; they decreased to 32 percent in FY 1970, to 31 percent in 
FY 1980, to 18.5 percent in FY 1988, and to 15.3 percent in FY 
1993. This drop in agriculture's share was somewhat misleading 
because agricultural products, such as cotton and jute, that 
were exported in the raw form in the 1950s, have been 
exported as cotton yarn, fabrics, ready-made garments, coir 
yarn, and jute manufactures since the 1960s. 



424 



Women washing water buffalo, Agra, Uttar Pradesh 
Courtesy Sandra Day O'Connor 



The composition of agricultural and allied products for 
export changed mainly because of the continuing growth of 
demand in the domestic market. This demand cut into the sur- 
plus available for export despite a continuing desire, on the 
part of government, to shore up the constant foreign-exchange 
shortage (see Foreign-Exchange System, ch. 6). In FY 1960, tea 
was the principal export by value. Oil cakes, tobacco, cashew 
kernels, spices, and raw cotton were about equal in value but 
were only one-eighth of the value of tea exports. By FY 1980, 
tea was still dominant, but coffee, rice, fish, and fish products 
came close, followed by oil cakes, cashew kernels, and cotton. 
In 1992-93 fish and fish products became the primary agricul- 
tural export, followed by oil meals, then cereals, and then tea. 
The share of fish products rose steadily from less than 2 per- 
cent of all agricultural exports in FY 1960, to 10 percent in FY 
1980, to approximately 15 percent for the three-year period 



425 



India: A Country Study 



ending in FY 1990, and to 23 percent in FY 1992. The share of 
tea in agricultural exports fell from 40 percent in FY 1960 to 
roughly 17 percent in the FY 1988-FY1990 period, and to only 
13 percent by FY 1992. 

External Aid 

Foreign aid — financial and technical — since the 1950s has 
made a significant contribution to the agricultural progress in 
rural India. Aid has come from many sources: the United States 
government, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Founda- 
tion, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization 
(FAO — see Glossary) of the United Nations (UN), the Euro- 
pean Economic Community, the former Soviet Union, Britain, 
and Japan, among others (see Aid, ch. 6). 

Agricultural aid also has come in many forms. Between 1963 
and 1972, for example, under a program of the United States 
Agency for International Development, some 400 American 
scientists and scholars served on the faculties of India's agricul- 
tural universities, while more than 500 faculty members from 
Indian institutions received advanced training in the United 
States and other countries. Several hundred agricultural 
research projects, financed with funds generated from sales of 
American farm commodities under the United States Public 
Law 480 program, fueled technological breakthroughs in 
Indian agriculture. 

Aid to the agricultural sector continued in the late 1980s and 
the early 1990s; the FAO, the European Union, the World 
Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme 
(UNDP) provided the bulk of the assistance. The FAO pro- 
vided technical assistance in a number of emerging areas; it 
provided quality control for exports; videos for rural communi- 
cation and training; and market studies for wool processing, 
mushroom production, and egg and poultry marketing. Oper- 
ation Flood — a dairy development program — was jointly spon- 
sored by the European Economic Community, the World Bank, 
and India's National Dairy Development Board (see Livestock 
and Poultry, this ch.). The UNDP provided technical assistance 
by sending foreign experts, consultants, and equipment to 
India. The World Bank and its affiliates supported agricultural 
extension, social (community-based) forestry, agricultural 
credit, dairy development, horticulture, seed development, 
rain-fed fish farms, storage, marketing, and irrigation. 



426 



Agriculture 



India has not only been a receiver of aid. Increasingly since 
independence, India has been sharing its agricultural technol- 
ogy with other developing countries. Numerous foreign scien- 
tists have received special and advanced training in India; 
hundreds of foreign students have attended Indian state agri- 
cultural universities. Among other international agricultural 
endeavors, India has contributed scientists, services, and funds 
to the work of the International Rice Research Institute, head- 
quartered in the Philippines. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, 
India provided short- and long-term training courses to hun- 
dreds of foreign specialists each year under a variety of pro- 
grams, including the Technical Cooperation Scheme of the 
Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Develop- 
ment in Asia and the Pacific (Colombo Plan — see Glossary) 
and the Technical Cooperation Scheme of the Commonwealth 
of Nations Assistance Program (see Participation in Interna- 
tional Organizations, ch. 9). 

Impact of Economic Reforms on Agriculture 

The serious foreign-exchange crisis in 1990 led to a number 
of well-publicized economic reforms in the early 1990s dealing 
with trade, industrial licensing, and privatization. The reforms 
had an impact on the agricultural sector through the central 
government's effort to withdraw the fertilizer subsidy and place 
greater emphasis on agricultural exports. The cut in the fertil- 
izer subsidy was a result of the government's commitment to 
reduce New Delhi's fiscal deficit by removing grants and subsi- 
dies from the budget. The government action led to a reduc- 
tion in the use of chemical fertilizers and protests by farmers 
and opposition political parties. The government was forced to 
continue the subsidies but at a somewhat lower level. 

New import and export policies aim at enhancing export 
capabilities of the agricultural sector by increasing productivity 
and promoting modernization and competitiveness. The mea- 
sures to facilitate export growth include allowing the import of 
capital for the agricultural sector, reducing the list of agricul- 
tural products that cannot be exported, and removing the min- 
imum export price from a number of products. Agricultural 
exports increased by 30 percent in FY 1991 and 14 percent in 
FY 1992 in terms of rupee value, but declined by 8 percent 
from FY 1990 to FY 1992 in United States dollar terms because 
of the devaluation of the rupee in 1991. 



427 



India: A Country Study 

In the mid-1990s, it was expected that agriculture would con- 
tinue to be the most important sector of the economy for the 
rest of the decade in terms of the proportion of GDP. However, 
even when it is not the sector providing the largest share of 
GDP, the importance of agriculture is not likely to diminish 
because of its critical role in providing food, wage goods, 
employment, and raw materials to industries. Despite their pre- 
occupation with industrial development, India's planners and 
policy makers have had to acknowledge the critical role of agri- 
culture in the early 1990s by changing basic policy. The gains in 
agricultural production should not lead to complacency, how- 
ever. Continuing increases in productivity, developing allied 
activities in rural areas, and building infrastructure in rural 
areas are essential if India is to continue to be self-reliant in 
food and agricultural products and provide a modest surplus 
for exports. 

* * * 

There is abundant literature on Indian agriculture, and 
much of it is highly detailed. A source that brings together a 
wide variety of useful information is Subhash C. Kashyap's 
National Policy Studies, which provides a good overview of agri- 
cultural policy. A critical review of agricultural development 
and policy is provided by B.M. Bhatia's Indian Agriculture: A Pol- 
icy Perspective. N.S.S. Narayana, K.S. Parikh, and T.N. Srini- 
vasan's Agriculture, Growth, and Redistribution of Income is a more 
rigorous analysis of policy issues that also contains a large 
amount of descriptive information. The Indian Ministry of 
Information and Broadcasting's India: A Reference Annual is a 
valuable source. The Ministry of Finance's annual Economic Sur- 
vey gives a detailed account of developments in agriculture. 
The Economic and Political Weekly is India's premier source of 
news and analysis regarding all issues connected with agricul- 
ture. (For further information and complete citations, see Bib- 
liography.) 



428 



Chapter 8. Government and Politics 



Geometric and floral floor design, Rajasthan 



INDIAN POLITICS ENTERED a new era at the beginning of 
the 1990s. The period of political domination by the Congress 
(I) branch of the Indian National Congress (see Glossary) 
came to an end with the party's defeat in the 1989 general elec- 
tions, and India began a period of intense multiparty political 
competition. Even though the Congress (I) regained power as 
a minority government in 1991, its grasp on power was precari- 
ous. The Nehruvian socialist ideology that the party had used 
to fashion India's political agenda had lost much of its popular 
appeal. The Congress (I) polidcal leadership had lost the man- 
tle of moral integrity inherited from the Indian National Con- 
gress's role in the independence movement, and it was widely 
viewed as corrupt. Support among key social bases of the Con- 
gress (I) political coalition was seriously eroding. The main 
alternative to the Congress (I), the Bharatiya Janata Party 
(BJP — Indian People's Party), embarked on a campaign to 
reorganize the Indian electorate in an effort to create a Hindu 
nationalist majority coalition. Simultaneously, such parties as 
the Janata Dal (People's Party), the Samajwadi Party (Socialist 
Party), and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP — Party of Society's 
Majority) attempted to ascend to power on the crest of an alli- 
ance of interests uniting Dalits (see Glossary), Backward 
Classes (see Glossary), Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary), and 
religious minorities. 

The structure of India's federal — or union — system not only 
creates a strong central government but also has facilitated the 
concentration of power in the central government in general 
and in particular in the Office of the Prime Minister. This cen- 
tralization of power has been a source of considerable contro- 
versy and political tension. It is likely to further exacerbate 
political conflict because of the increasing pluralism of the 
country's party system and the growing diversity of interest- 
group representation. 

Once viewed as a source of solutions for the country's eco- 
nomic and social problems, the Indian polity is increasingly 
seen by political observers as the problem. When populist polit- 
ical appeals stir the passions of the masses, government institu- 
tions appear less capable than ever before of accommodating 
conflicts in a society mobilized along competing ethnic and 
religious lines. In addition, law and order have become increas- 



431 



India: A Country Study 

ingly tenuous because of the growing inability of the police to 
curb criminal activities and quell communal disturbances. 
Indeed, many observers bemoan the "criminalization" of 
Indian politics at a time when politicians routinely hire "muscle 
power" to improve their electoral prospects, and criminals 
themselves successfully run for public office. These circum- 
stances have led some observers to conclude that India has 
entered into a growing crisis of governability. 

Few analysts would deny the gravity of India's problems, but 
some contend they have occurred amidst the maturation of 
civil society and the emergence of new, more democratic politi- 
cal practices. Backward Classes, the Dalits, and tribal peoples 
increasingly have refused to rest content with the patronage 
and populism characteristic of the "Congress system." Mobiliza- 
tion of these groups has provided a viable base for the political 
opposition and unraveled the fabric of the Congress. Since the 
late 1970s, there has been a proliferation of nongovernmental 
organizations. These groups made new demands on the politi- 
cal system that required a substantial redistribution of political 
power, economic resources, and social status. 

Whether or not developments in Indian politics exacerbate 
the continuing problems or give birth to greater democracy 
broadly hinges on efforts to resolve three key issues. How will 
India's political system, now more than ever based on egalitar- 
ian democratic values, accommodate the changes taking place 
in its hierarchical social system? How will the state balance the 
need to recognize the interests of the country's remarkably het- 
erogeneous society with the imperatives of national unity? And, 
in the face of the declining legitimacy of the Indian state and 
the continuing development of civil society, can the Indian 
state regenerate its legitimacy, and if it is to do so, how should it 
redefine the boundaries between state and society? India has 
confronted these issues throughout much of its history. These 
issues, with their intrinsic tensions, will continue to serve as 
sources of change in the continuing evolution of the Indian 
polity. 

The Constitutional Framework 

The constitution of India draws extensively from Western 
legal traditions in its outline of the principles of liberal democ- 
racy. It is distinguished from many Western constitutions, how- 
ever, in its elaboration of principles reflecting the aspirations to 
end the inequities of traditional social relations and enhance 



432 



Government and Politics 



the social welfare of the population. According to constitu- 
tional scholar Granville Austin, probably no other nation's con- 
stitution "has provided so much impetus toward changing and 
rebuilding society for the common good." Since its enactment, 
the constitution has fostered a steady concentration of power 
in the central government — especially the Office of the Prime 
Minister. This centralization has occurred in the face of the 
increasing assertiveness of an array of ethnic and caste groups 
across Indian society. Increasingly, the government has 
responded to the resulting tensions by resorting to the formi- 
dable array of authoritarian powers provided by the constitu- 
tion. Together with the public's perception of pervasive 
corruption among India's politicians, the state's centralization 
of authority and increasing resort to coercive power have 
eroded its legitimacy. However, a new assertiveness shown by 
the Supreme Court and the Election Commission suggests that 
the remaining checks and balances among the country's politi- 
cal institutions continue to support the resilience of Indian 
democracy. 

Adopted after some two and one-half years of deliberation 
by the Constituent Assembly that also acted as India's first legis- 
lature, the constitution was put into effect on January 26, 1950. 
Bhimrao Ramji (B.R.) Ambedkar, a Dalit who earned a law 
degree from Columbia University, chaired the drafting com- 
mittee of the constitution and shepherded it through Constitu- 
ent Assembly debates. Supporters of independent India's 
founding father, Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi, 
backed measures that would form a decentralized polity with 
strong local administration — known as panchayat (pi., pan- 
chayats — see Glossary) — in a system known as panchayati raj, 
that is rule by panchayats. However, the support of more mod- 
ernist leaders, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, ultimately led to a par- 
liamentary government and a federal system with a strong 
central government (see Nehru's Legacy, ch. 1). Following a 
British parliamentary pattern, the constitution embodies the 
Fundamental Rights, which are similar to the United States Bill 
of Rights, and a Supreme Court similar to that of the United 
States. It creates a "sovereign democratic republic" called 
India, or Bharat (after the legendary king of the Mahabharata) , 
which "shall be a Union of States." India is a federal system in 
which residual powers of legislation remain with the central 
government, similar to that in Canada. The constitution pro- 
vides detailed lists dividing up powers between central and 



433 



India: A Country Study 



state governments as in Australia, and it elaborates a set of 
Directive Principles of State Policy as does the Irish constitu- 
tion. 

The 395 articles and ten appendixes, known as schedules, in 
the constitution make it one of the longest and most detailed 
in the world. Schedules can be added to the constitution by 
amendment. The ten schedules in force cover the designations 
of the states and union territories; the emoluments for hififh- 
level officials; forms of oaths; allocation of the number of seats 
in the Rajya Sabha (Council of States — the upper house of Par- 
liament) per state or territory; provisions for the administra- 
tion and control of Scheduled Areas (see Glossary) and 
Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary) ; provisions for the administra- 
tion of tribal areas in Assam; the union (meaning central gov- 
ernment), state, and concurrent (dual) lists of responsibilities; 
the official languages; land and tenure reforms; and the associ- 
ation of Sikkim with India; i 

The Indian constitution is also one of the most frequently 
amended constitutions in the world. The first amendment 
came onlv a year after the adoption of the constitution and 
instituted numerous minor changes. Many more amendments 
followed, and through June 1995 the constitution had been 
amended seventy-seven times, a rate of almost two amend- 
ments per year since 1950. Most of the constitution can be 
amended after a quorum of more than half of the members of 
each house in Parliament passes an amendment with a two- 
thirds majority vote. Articles pertaining to the distribution of 
legislative authority between the central and state governments 
must also be approved by 50 percent of the state legislatures. 

Fundamental Rights 

The Fundamental Rights embodied in the constitution are 
guaranteed to all citizens. These civil liberties take precedence 
over any other law of the land. They include individual rights 
common to most liberal democracies, such as equality before 
the law, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of associa- 
tion and peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, and the right 
to constitutional remedies for the protection of civil rights such 
as habeas corpus. In addition, the Fundamental Rights are 
aimed at overturning the inequities of past social practices. 
They abolish "untouchability"; prohibit discrimination on the 
grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth; and for- 
bid traffic in human beings and forced labor. They go beyond 



434 



Government and Politics 



conventional civil liberties in protecting cultural and educa- 
tional rights of minorities by ensuring that minorities may pre- 
serve their distinctive languages and establish and administer 
their own education institutions. Originally, the right to prop- 
erty was also included in the Fundamental Rights; however, the 
Forty-fourth Amendment, passed in 1978, revised the status of 
property rights by stating that "No person shall be deprived of 
his property save by authority of law." Freedom of speech and 
expression, generally interpreted to include freedom of the 
press, can be limited "in the interests of the sovereignty and 
integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations 
with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in 
relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an 
offence" (see The Media, this ch.). 

Directive Principles of State Policy 

An important feature of the constitution is the Directive 
Principles of State Policy. Although the Directive Principles are 
asserted to be "fundamental in the governance of the country," 
they are not legally enforceable. Instead, they are guidelines 
for creating a social order characterized by social, economic, 
and political justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity as enunci- 
ated in the constitution's preamble. 

In some cases, the Directive Principles articulate goals that, 
however admirable, remain vague platitudes, such as the 
injunctions that the state "shall direct its policy towards secur- 
ing . . . that the ownership and control of the material 
resources of the community are so distributed to subserve the 
common good" and "endeavor to promote international peace 
and security." In other areas, the Directive Principles provide 
more specific policy objectives. They exhort the state to secure 
work at a living wage for all citizens; take steps to encourage 
worker participation in industrial management; provide for 
just and humane conditions of work, including maternity leave; 
and promote the educational and economic interests of Sched- 
uled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other disadvantaged sectors 
of society. The Directive Principles also charge the state with 
the responsibility for providing free and compulsory education 
for children up to age fourteen (see Administration and Fund- 
ing, ch. 2). 

The Directive Principles also urge the nation to develop a 
uniform civil code and offer free legal aid to all citizens. They 
urge measures to maintain the separation of the judiciary from 



435 



India: A Country Study 



the executive and direct the government to organize village 
panchayats to function as units of self-government. This latter 
objective was advanced by the Seventy-third Amendment and 
the Seventy-fourth Amendment in December 1992. The Direc- 
tive Principles also order that India should endeavor to protect 
and improve the environment and protect monuments and 
places of historical interest. 

The Forty-second Amendment, which came into force in 
January 1977, attempted to raise the status of the Directive 
Principles by stating that no law implementing any of the 
Directive Principles could be declared unconstitutional on the 
grounds that it violated anv of the Fundamental Rigdits. The 
amendment simultaneously stated that laws prohibiting "anti- 
national activities" or the formation of "antinational associa- 
tions" could not be invalidated because they infringed on any 
of the Fundamental Rights. It added a new section to the con- 
stitution on "Fundamental Duties" that enjoined citizens "to 
promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood 
among all the people of India, transcending religious, linguis- 
tic and regional or sectional diversities." However, the amend- 
ment reflected a new emphasis in governing circles on order 
and discipline to counteract what some leaders had come to 
perceive as the excessively freewheeling style of Indian democ- 
racy. After the March 1977 general election ended the control 
of the Congress (Congress (R) from 1969) over the executive 
and legislature for the first time since independence in 1947, 
the new Janata-dominated Parliament passed the Forty-third 
Amendment (1977) and Forty-fourth Amendment (1978). 
These amendments revoked the Forty-second Amendment's 
provision that Directive Principles take precedence over Fun- 
damental Rights and also curbed Parliament's power to legis- 
late against "antinational activities" (see The Legislature, this 
ch.). 

Group Rights 

In addition to stressing; the rig-fit of individuals as citizens, 
Part XVI of the constitution endeavors to promote social jus- 
tice bv elaborating; a series of affirmative-action measures for 
disadvantaged groups. These "Special Provisions Relating to 
Certain Classes" include the reservation of seats in the Lok 
Sabha (House of the People) and in state legislative bodies for 
members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The num- 
ber of seats set aside for them is proportional to their share of 



436 



President Shankar Dayal Sharma being driven in a coach to 
Rashtrapatri Bhavan, the Presidential Palace, after his July 26, 1992, 

swearing-in ceremony 
Courtesy India Abroad News Service 

the national and respective state populations. Part XVI also 
reserves some government appointments for these disadvan- 
taged groups insofar as they do not interfere with administra- 
tive efficiency. The section stipulates that a special officer for 
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes be appointed by the 
president to "investigate all matters relating to the safeguards 
provided" for them, as well as periodic commissions to investi- 
gate the conditions of the Backward Classes. The president, in 
consultation with state governors, designates those groups that 
meet the criteria of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. 
Similar protections exist for the small Anglo-Indian commu- 
nity. 

The framers of the constitution provided that the special 
provisions would cease twenty years after the promulgation of 



437 



India: A Country Study 

the constitution, anticipating that the progress of the disadvan- 
taged groups during that time would have removed significant 
disparities between them and other groups in society. However, 
in 1969 the Twenty-third Amendment extended the affirma- 
tive-action measures until 1980. The Forty-fifth Amendment of 
1980 extended them again until 1990, and in 1989 the Sixty- 
second Amendment extended the provisions until 2000. The 
Seventy-seventh Amendment of 1995 further strengthened the 
states' authority to reserve government-service positions for 
Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe members. 

Emergency Provisions and Authoritarian Powers 

Part XVIII of the constitution permits the state to suspend 
various civil liberties and the application of certain federal 
principles during presidentially proclaimed states of emer- 
gency. The constitution provides for three categories of emer- 
gencies: a threat by "war or external aggression" or by "internal 
disturbances"; a "failure of constitutional machinery" in the 
country or in a state; and a threat to the financial security or 
credit of the nation or a part of it. Under the first two catego- 
ries, the Fundamental Rights, with the exception of protection 
of life and personal liberty, may be suspended, and federal 
principles may be rendered inoperative. A proclamation of a 
state of emergency lapses after two months if not approved by 
both houses of Parliament. The president can issue a proclama- 
tion dissolving a state government if it can be determined, 
upon receipt of a report from a governor, that circumstances 
prevent the government of that state from maintaining law and 
order according to the constitution. This action establishes 
what is known as President's Rule because under such a procla- 
mation the president can assume any or all functions of the 
state government; transfer the powers of the state legislature to 
Parliament; or take other measures necessary to achieve the 
objectives of the proclamation, including suspension, in whole 
or in part, of the constitution. A proclamation of President's 
Rule cannot interfere with the exercise of authority by the 
state's high court. Once approved, President's Rule normally 
lasts for six months, but it may be extended up to one year if 
Parliament approves. In exceptional cases, such as the violent 
revolt in Jammu and Kashmir during the early and mid-1990s, 
President's Rule has lasted for a period of more than five years. 

President's Rule has been imposed frequently, and its use is 
often politically motivated. During the terms of prime minis- 



438 



Government and Politics 



ters Nehru and Lai Bahadur Shastri, from 1947 to 1966, it was 
imposed ten times. Under Indira Gandhi's two tenures as 
prime minister (1966-77 and 1980-84), President's Rule was 
imposed forty-one times. Despite Mrs. Gandhi's frequent use of 
President's Rule, she was in office longer (187 months) than 
any other prime minister except Nehru (201 months). Other 
prime ministers also have been frequent users: Morarji Desai 
(eleven times in twenty-eight months), Chaudhury Charan 
Singh (five times in less than six months), Rajiv Gandhi (eight 
times in sixty-one months), Vishwanath Pratap (V.P.) Singh 
(two times in eleven months), Chandra Shekhar (four times in 
seven months), and P.V. Narasimha Rao (nine times in his first 
forty-two months in office). 

State of emergency proclamations have been issued three 
times since independence. The first was in 1962 during the 
border war with China. Another was declared in 1971 when 
India went to war against Pakistan over the independence of 
East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. In 1975 the third 
Emergency was imposed in response to an alledged threat by 
"internal disturbances" stemming from the political opposition 
to Indira Gandhi (see The Rise of Indira Gandhi, ch. 1; 
National-Level Agencies, ch. 10). 

The Indian state has authoritarian powers in addition to the 
constitution's provisions for proclamations of Emergency Rule 
and President's Rule. The Preventive Detention Act was passed 
in 1950 and remained in force until 1970. Shortly after the start 
of the Emergency in 1962, the government enacted the 
Defence of India Act. This legislation created the Defence of 
India Rules, which allow for preventive detention of individuals 
who have acted or who are likely to act in a manner detrimen- 
tal to public order and national security. The Defence of India 
Rules were reimposed during the 1971 war with Pakistan; they 
remained in effect after the end of the war and were invoked 
for a variety of uses not intended by their framers, such as the 
arrests made during a nationwide railroad strike in 1974. 

The Maintenance of Internal Security Act promulgated in 
1971 also provides for preventive detention. During the 1975- 
77 Emergency, the act was amended to allow the government 
to arrest individuals without specifying charges. The govern- 
ment arrested tens of thousands of opposition politicians 
under the Defence of India Rules and the Maintenance of 
Internal Security Act, including most of the leaders of the 
future Janata Party government (see Political Parties, this ch.). 



439 



India: A Country Study 

Shortly after the Janata government came to power in 1977, 
Parliament passed the Forty-fourth Amendment, which revised 
the domestic circumstances cited in Article 352 as justifying an 
emergency from "internal disturbance" to "armed rebellion." 
Duringjanata rule, Parliament also repealed the Defence of 
India Rules and the Maintenance of Internal Security Act. 
However, after the Congress (I) returned to power in 1980, 
Parliament passed the National Security Act authorizing secu- 
rity forces to arrest individuals without warrant for suspicion of 
action that subverts national security, public order, and essen- 
tial economic services. The Essential Services Maintenance Act 
of 1981 permits the government to prohibit strikes and lock- 
outs in sixteen economic sectors providing critical goods and 
services. The Fifty-ninth Amendment, passed in 1988, restored 
"internal disturbance" in place of "armed rebellion" as just 
cause for the proclamation of an emergency. 

The Sikh militant movement that spread through Punjab 
during the 1980s spurred additional authoritarian legislation 
(see Insurgent Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). 
In 1984 Parliament passed the National Security Amendment 
Act enabling government security forces to detain prisoners for 
up to one year. The 1984 Terrorist Affected Areas (Special 
Courts) Ordinance provided security forces in Punjab with 
unprecedented powers of detention, and it authorized secret 
tribunals to try suspected terrorists. The 1985 Terrorist and 
Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act imposed the death pen- 
alty for anyone convicted of terrorist actions that led to the 
death of others. It empowered authorities to tap telephones, 
censor mail, and conduct raids when individuals are alleged to 
pose a threat to the unity and sovereignty of the nation. The 
legislation renewing the act in 1987 provided for in camera tri- 
als, which may be presided over by any central government offi- 
cer, and reversed the legal presumption of innocence if the 
government produces specific evidence linking a suspect to a 
terrorist act. In March 1988, the Fifty-ninth Amendment 
increased the period that an emergency can be in effect with- 
out legislative approval from six months to three years, and it 
eliminated the assurance of due process and protection of life 
and liberty with regard to Punjab found in articles 20 and 21. 
These rights were restored in 1989 by the Sixty-third Amend- 
ment. 

By June 30, 1994, more than 76,000 persons throughout 
India had been arrested under the Terrorist and Disruptive 



440 



Government and Politics 



Activities (Prevention) Act. The act became widely unpopular, 
and the Rao government allowed the law to lapse in May 1995. 

The Structure of Government 

The union government, as India's central government is 
known, is divided into three distinct but interrelated branches: 
legislative, executive, and judicial (see fig. 14). As in the British 
parliamentary model, the leadership of the executive is drawn 
from and responsible to the legislative body. Although Article 
50 stipulates the separation of the judiciary from the executive, 
the executive controls judicial appointments and many of the 
conditions of work. In addition, one of the more dramatic insti- 
tutional battles in the Indian polity has been the struggle 
between elements wanting to assert legislative power to amend 
the constitution and those favoring the judiciary's efforts to 
preserve the constitution's basic structure. 

The Legislature 

Parliament consists of a bicameral legislature, the Lok Sabha 
(House of the People — the lower house) and the Rajya Sabha 
(Council of States — the upper house). Parliament's principal 
function is to pass laws on those matters that the constitution 
specifies to be within its jurisdiction. Among its constitutional 
powers are approval and removal of members of the Council of 
Ministers, amendment of the constitution, approval of central 
. government finances, and delimitation of state and union terri- 
tory boundaries (see State Governments and Union Territo- 
ries, this ch.). 

The president has a specific authority with respect to the 
function of the legislative branch (see The Executive, this ch.). 
The president is authorized to convene Parliament and must 
give his assent to all parliamentary bills before they become 
law. The president is empowered to summon Parliament to 
meet, to address either house or both houses together, and to 
require attendance of all of its members. The president also 
may send messages to either house with respect to a pending 
bill or any other matter. The president addresses the first ses- 
sion of Parliament each year and must give assent to all provi- 
sions in bills passed. 

Lok Sabha 

The Lok Sabha in 1995 constitutionally had 545 seats. For a 



441 



India: A Coun try St u dy 



JUDICIARY 



EXECUTIVE 



LEGISLATURE 



SUPREME COURT 
OF INDIA 



PRESIDENT 
VICE PRESIDENT 



PARLIAMENT 



LOK SABHA 
(HOUSE OF 
THE PEOPLE) 



COUNCIL OF MINISTERS 



PRIME MINISTER 








GOVE 


RNOR 



RAJYA SABHA 
(COUNCIL OF 
STATES) 



HIGH COURTS 



COUNCIL OF 
MINISTERS 



_ CHIEF MINISTER _ 



MUNICIPAL 
CORPORATIONS 
OR COMMITTEES 



LEGISLATURE 



LOWER COURTS 



DISTRICT 




ZILA PARISHAD 






I 




DEVELOPMENT 




PANCHAYAT 


BLOCK 




SAMITI 


1 




VILLAGE-LEVEL 




PANCHAYAT 


WORKER 





15 

= < 

O K 

«2 



Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. 

Research and Reference Division. India, 1994: A Reference Annual, New Delhi. 
1995, 28-94. 



Figure 14. Structure of the Government, 1995 



442 



Government and Politics 



variety of reasons, elections are sometimes not held in all con- 
stitutiencies, leaving some seats vacant and giving the appear- 
ance of fewer seats in the lower house. A member must be at 
least twenty-five years of age. Two members are nominated by 
the president as representatives of the Anglo-Indian commu- 
nity, and the rest are popularly elected. Elections are held on a 
one-stage, "first-past-the-post" system, similar to that in the 
United States. As in the United States, candidates from larger 
parties are favored because each constituency elects only the 
candidate winning the most votes. In the context of multiple- 
candidate elections, most members of Parliament are elected 
with pluralities of the vote that amount to less than a majority. 
As a result, political parties can gain commanding positions in 
the Parliament without winning the support of a majority of 
the electorate. For instance, Congress has dominated Indian 
politics without ever winning a majority of votes in parliamen- 
tary elections. The best-ever Congress performance in parlia- 
mentary elections was in 1984 when Congress (I) won 48 
percent of the vote and garnered 76 percent of the parliamen- 
tary seats. In the 1991 elections, Congress (I) won 37.6 percent 
of the vote and 42 percent of the seats. 

The usual Lok Sabha term is five years. However, the presi- 
dent may dissolve the house and call for new elections should 
the government lose its majority in Parliament. Elections must 
be held within six months after Parliament is dissolved. The 
prime minister can choose electorally advantageous times to 
recommend the dissolution of Parliament to the president in 
an effort to maximize support in the next Parliament. The 
term of Parliament can be extended in yearly increments if an 
emergency has been proclaimed. This situation occurred in 
1976 when Parliament was extended beyond its five-year term 
under the Emergency proclaimed the previous year. The con- 
stitution stipulates that the Lok Sabha must meet at least twice 
a year, and no more than six months can pass between sessions. 
The Lok Sabha customarily meets for three sessions a year. The 
Council of Ministers is responsible only to the Lok Sabha, and 
the authority to initiate financial legislation is vested exclusively 
in the Lok Sabha. 

The powers and authority of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya 
Sabha are not differentiated. The index of the constitution, for 
example, has a lengthy list of the powers of Parliament but not 
for each separate house. The key differences between the two 
houses lie in their disparate authority in the legislative process. 



443 



India: A Country Study 
Rajya Sabha 

The Rajya Sabha has a maximum of 250 members. All but 
twelve are elected by state and territory legislatures for six-year 
terms. Members must be at least thirty years old. The president 
nominates up to twelve members on the basis of their special 
knowledge or practical experience in fields such as literature, 
science, art, and social service. No further approval of these 
nominations is required by Parliament. Elections are staggered 
so that one-third of the members are elected every two years. 
The number of seats allocated to each state and territory is 
determined on the basis of relative population, except that 
smaller states and territories are awarded a larger share than 
their population justifies. 

The Rajya Sabha meets in continuous session. It is not sub- 
ject to dissolution as is the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha is 
designed to provide stability and continuity to the legislative 
process. Although considered the upper house, its authority in 
the legislative process is subordinate to that of the Lok Sabha. 

Legislative Process 

The initiative for substantial legislation comes primarily 
from the prime minister, cabinet members, and high-level offi- 
cials. Although all legislation except financial bills can be intro- 
duced in either house, most laws originate in the Lok Sabha. A 
legislative proposal may go through three readings before it is 
voted on. After a bill has been passed by the originating house, 
it is sent to the other house, where it is debated and voted on. 
The second house can accept, reject, or amend the bill. If the 
bill is amended by the second house, it must be returned to the 
originating house in its amended form. If a bill is rejected by 
the second house, if there is disagreement about the proposed 
amendments, or if the second house fails to act on a bill for six 
months, the president is authorized to summon a joint session 
of Parliament to vote on the bill. Disagreements are resolved by 
a majority vote of the members of both houses present in a 
joint session. This procedure favors the Lok Sabha because it 
has more than twice as many members as the Rajya Sabha. 

When the bill has been passed by both houses, it is sent to 
the president, who can refuse assent and send the bill back to 
Parliament for reconsideration. If both houses pass it again, 
with or without amendments, it is sent to the president a sec- 
ond time. The president is then obliged to assent to the legisla- 



444 



Government and Politics 



tion. After receiving the president's assent, a bill becomes an 
act on the statute book. 

The legislative procedure for bills involving taxing and 
spending — known as money bills — is different from the proce- 
dure for other legislation. Money bills can be introduced only 
in the Lok Sabha. After the Lok Sabha passes a money bill, it is 
sent to the Rajya Sabha. The upper house has fourteen days to 
act on the bill. If the Rajya Sabha fails to act within fourteen 
days, the bill becomes law. The Rajya Sabha may send an 
amended version of the bill back to the Lok Sabha, but the lat- 
ter is not bound to accept these changes. It may pass the origi- 
nal bill again, at which point it will be sent to the president for 
his signature. 

During the 1950s and part of the 1960s, Parliament was 
often the scene of articulate debate and substantial revisions of 
legislation. Prime ministers Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and 
P.V. Narasimha Rao, however, showed little enthusiasm for par- 
liamentary debate. During the 1975-77 Emergency, many 
members of Parliament from the opposition as well as dissi- 
dents within Indira's own party were arrested, and press cover- 
age of legislative proceedings was censored. It is generally 
agreed that the quality of discourse and the expertise of mem- 
bers of Parliament have declined since the 1960s. An effort to 
halt the decline of Parliament through a reformed committee 
system giving Parliament new powers of oversight over the 
executive branch has had very limited impact. 

Under the constitution, the division of powers between the 
union government and the states is delimited into three lists: 
the Union List, the State List, and the Concurrent List. Parlia- 
ment has exclusive authority to legislate on any of the ninety- 
seven items on the Union List. The list includes banking, com- 
munications, defense, foreign affairs, interstate commerce, and 
transportation. The State List includes sixty-seven items that 
are under the exclusive jurisdiction of state legislatures, includ- 
ing agriculture, local government, police, public health, public 
order, and trade and commerce within the state. The central — 
or union — government and state governments exercise con- 
current jurisdiction over forty-four items on the Concurrent 
List, including criminal law and procedure, economic and 
social planning, electricity, factories, marriage and divorce, 
price control, social security and social insurance, and trade 
unions. The purpose of the Concurrent List is to secure legal 
and administrative unity throughout the country. Laws passed 



445 



India: A Country Study 

by Parliament relevant to Concurrent List areas take prece- 
dence over laws passed by state legislatures. 

The Executive 

The executive branch is headed by the president, in whom 
the constitution vests a formidable array of powers. The presi- 
dent serves as head of state and the supreme commander of 
the armed forces. The president appoints the prime minister, 
cabinet members, governors of states and territories, Supreme 
Court and high court justices, and ambassadors and other dip- 
lomatic representatives. The president is also authorized to 
issue ordinances with the force of acts of Parliament when Par- 
liament is not in session. The president can summon and pro- 
rogue Parliament as well as dissolve the Lok Sabha and call for 
new elections. The president also can dismiss state and terri- 
tory governments. Exercise of these impressive powers has 
been restricted by the convention that the president acts on the 
advice of the prime minister. In 1976 the Forty-second Amend- 
ment formally required the president to act according to the 
advice of the Council of Ministers headed by the prime minis- 
ter. The spirit of the arrangement is reflected in Ambedkar's 
statement that the president "is head of the State but not of the 
Executive. He represents the nation but does not rule the 
nation." In practice, the president's role is predominantly sym- 
bolic and ceremonial, roughly analogous to the president of 
Germany or the British monarch. 

The president is elected for a five-year term by an electoral 
college consisting of the elected members of both houses of 
Parliament and the elected members of the legislative assem- 
blies of the states and territories. The participation of state and 
territory assemblies in the election is designed to ensure that 
the president is chosen to head the nation and not merely the 
majority party in Parliament, thereby placing the office above 
politics and making the incumbent a symbol of national unity. 

Despite the strict constraints placed on presidential author- 
ity, presidential elections have shaped the course of Indian pol- 
itics on several occasions, and presidents have exercised 
important power, especially when no party has a clear parlia- 
mentary majority. The presidential election of 1969, for exam- 
ple, turned into a dramatic test of strength for rival factions 
when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi put up an opponent to the 
official Congress candidate. The electoral contest contributed 
to the subsequent split of the Congress. In 1979, after the Ja- 



446 



India's Parliament, New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



nata Party began to splinter, President Neelam Sanjiva Reddy 
(1977-82) first selected Janata member Chaudhury Charan 
Singh as prime minister (1979-80) to form a minority govern- 
ment and then dissolved Parliament and called for new elec- 
tions while ignoring Jagjivan Ram's claim that he could 
assemble a stable government and become the country's first 
Scheduled Caste prime minister. 

Tensions between President Giani Zail Singh (1982-87) and 
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi (1984-88) also illustrate the 
potential power of the president. In 1987 Singh refused to sign 
the Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill, thereby preventing 
the government from having the authority to censor personal 
mail. Singh's public suggestion that the prime minister had not 
treated the office of the president with proper dignity and the 
persistent rumors that Singh was plotting the prime minister's 
ouster contributed to the erosion of public confidence in Rajiv 
Gandhi that ultimately led to his defeat in the 1989 elections. 
In November 1990, President Ramaswami Venkataraman 
(1987-92) selected Chandra Shekhar as India's eleventh prime 
minister, even though Chandra Shekhar's splinter Samajwadi 
Janata Dal held only fifty-eight seats in the Lok Sabha. Chandra 



447 



India: A Country Study 



Shekhar resigned in June 1991 when the Congress (I) withdrew 
its support. 

In the same manner as the president, the vice president is 
elected by the electoral college for a five-year term. The vice 
president is ex officio chairman of the Rajya Sabha and acts as 
president when the latter is unable to discharge his duties 
because of absence, illness, or any other reason or until a new 
president can be elected (within six months of the vacancy) 
when a vacancy occurs because of death, resignation, or 
removal. There have been three instances since 1969 of the 
vice president serving as acting president. 

The prime minister is by far the most powerful figure in the 
government. After being selected by the president, typically 
from the party that commands the plurality of seats in Parlia- 
ment, the prime minister selects the Council of Ministers from 
other members of Parliament who are then appointed by the 
president. Indivi duals who are not members of Parliament may 
be appointed to the Council of Ministers if they become a 
member of Parliament either through election or appointment 
within six months of selection. The Council of Ministers is com- 
posed of cabinet ministers (numbering seventeen, represent- 
ing thirty-one portfolios in 1995), ministers of state (forty-five, 
representing fifty-three portfolios in 1995), and deputy minis- 
ters (the number varies). Cabinet members are selected to 
accommodate different regional groups, castes, and factions 
within the ruling party or coalition as well as with an eye to 
their administrative skills and experience. Prime ministers fre- 
quently retain key ministerial portfolios for themselves. 

Although the Council of Ministers is formally the highest 
policy-making body in the government, its powers have 
declined as influence has been increasingly centralized in the 
Office of the Prime Minister, which is composed of the top- 
ranking administrative staff. After the Congress split to form 
the Congress (R) — Rfor Requisition — and the Congress (O) — 
O for Organisation — in 1969, Indira Gandhi (who headed the 
Congress (R)) increasingly concentrated decision-making 
authority in the Office of the Prime Minister. When Rajiv Gan- 
dhi became prime minister in 1984, he promised to delegate 
more authority to his cabinet members. However, power rap- 
idly shifted back to the Office of the Prime Minister and a small 
coterie of Rajiv's personal advisers. Rajiv's dissatisfaction with 
his cabinet ministers became manifest in his incessant reshuf- 
fling of his cabinet. During his five years in office, he changed 



448 



Government and Politics 



his cabinet thirty-six times, about once every seven weeks. 
When P.V. Narasimha Rao became prime minister in June 
1991, he decentralized power, giving Minister of Finance Man- 
mohan Singh, in particular, a large measure of autonomy to 
develop a program for economic reform. After a year in office, 
Rao began again to centralize authority, and by the end of 

1994, the Office of the Prime Minister had grown to be as pow- 
erful as it ever was under Rao's predecessors. As of August 

1995, Rao himself held the portfolios in thirteen ministries, 
including those of defense, industry, and Kashmir affairs. 

The Judiciary 

Supreme Court 

The Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the consti- 
tution and the laws of the land. It has appellate jurisdiction 
over all civil and criminal proceedings involving substantial 
issues concerning the interpretation of the constitution. The 
court has the original and exclusive jurisdiction to resolve dis- 
putes between the central government and one or more states 
and union territories as well as between different states and 
union territories. And the Supreme Court is also empowered 
to issue advisory rulings on issues referred to it by the presi- 
dent. The Supreme Court has wide discretionary powers to 
hear special appeals on any matter from any court except those 
of the armed services. It also functions as a court of record and 
supervises every high court. 

Twenty-five associate justices and one chief justice serve on 
the Supreme Court. The president appoints the chief justice. 
Associate justices are also appointed by the president after con- 
sultation with the chief justice and, if the president deems nec- 
essary, with other associate justices of the Supreme Court and 
high court judges in the states. The appointments do not 
require Parliament's concurrence. Justices may not be removed 
from office until they reach mandatory retirement at age sixty- 
five unless each house of Parliament passes, by a vote of two- 
thirds of the members in attendance and a majority of its total 
membership, a presidential order charging "proved misbehav- 
ior or incapacity." 

The contradiction between the principles of parliamentary 
sovereignty and judicial review that is embedded in India's con- 
stitution has been a source of major controversy over the years. 
After the courts overturned state laws redistributing land from 



449 



India: A Country Study 



zamindar (see Glossary) estates on the grounds that the laws 
violated the zamindars' Fundamental Rights, Parliament 
passed the first (1951), fourth (1955), and seventeenth amend- 
ments (1964) to protect its authority to implement land redis- 
tribution. The Supreme Court countered these amendments in 
1967 when it ruled in the Golaknath v State of Punjab case that 
Parliament did not have the power to abrogate the Fundamen- 
tal Rights, including the provisions on private property. On 
February 1, 1970, the Supreme Court invalidated the govern- 
ment-sponsored Bank Nationalization Bill that had been 
passed by Parliament in August 1969. The Supreme Court also 
rejected as unconstitutional a presidential order of September 
7, 1970, that abolished the titles, privileges, and privy purses of 
the former rulers of India's old princely states. 

In reaction to Supreme Court decisions, in 1971 Parliament 
passed the Twenty-fourth Amendment empowering it to 
amend any provision of the constitution, including the Funda- 
mental Rights; the Twenty-fifth Amendment, making legislative 
decisions concerning proper land compensation nonjusticia- 
ble; and the Twenty-sixth Amendment, which added a constitu- 
tional article abolishing princely privileges and privy purses. 
On April 24, 1973, the Supreme Court responded to the parlia- 
mentary offensive by ruling in the Keshavananda Bharati v the 
State of Kerala case that although these amendments were con- 
stitutional, the court still reserved for itself the discretion to 
reject any constitutional amendments passed by Parliament by 
declaring that the amendments cannot change the constitu- 
tion's "basic structure." 

During the 1975-77 Emergency, Parliament passed the 
Forty-second Amendment in January 1977, which essentially 
abrogated the Keshavananda ruling by preventing the Supreme 
Court from reviewing any constitutional amendment with the 
exception of procedural issues concerning ratification. The 
Forty-second Amendment's fifty-nine clauses stripped the 
Supreme Court of many of its powers and moved the political 
system toward parliamentary sovereignty. However, the Forty- 
third and Forty-fourth amendments, passed by the Janata gov- 
ernment after the defeat of Indira Gandhi in March 1977, 
reversed these changes. In the Minerva Mills case of 1980, the 
Supreme Court reaffirmed its authority to protect the basic 
structure of the constitution. However, in the Judges Transfer 
case on December 31, 1981, the Supreme Court upheld the 



450 



President Shankar Dayal 
Sharma 

Courtesy Embassy of India, 
Washington 




government's authority to dismiss temporary judges and trans- 
fer high court justices without the consent of the chief justice. 

The Supreme Court continued to be embroiled in contro- 
versy in 1989, when its US$470 million judgment against Union 
Carbide for the Bhopal catastrophe resulted in public demon- 
strations protesting the inadequacy of the settlement (see The 
Growth of Cities, ch. 5). In 1991 the first-ever impeachment 
motion against a Supreme Court justice was signed by 108 
members of Parliament. A year later, a high-profile inquiry 
found Associate Justice V. Ramaswamy "guilty of willful and 
gross misuses of office . . . and moral turpitude by using public 
funds for private purposes and reckless disregard of statutory 
rules" while serving as chief justice of Punjab and Haryana. 
Despite this strong indictment, Ramaswamy survived parlia- 
mentary impeachment proceedings and remained on the 
Supreme Court after only 196 members of Parliament, less 
than the required two-thirds, voted for his ouster. 

During 1993 and 1994, the Supreme Court took measures to 
bolster the integrity of the courts and protect civil liberties in 
the face of state coercion. In an effort to avoid the appearance 
of conflict of interest in the judiciary, Chief Justice Manepalli 
Narayanrao Venkatachaliah initiated a controversial model 
code of conduct forjudges that required the transfer of high 
court judges having children practicing as attorneys in their 



451 



India: A Country Study 



courts. Since 1993, the Supreme Court has implemented a pol- 
icy to compensate the victims of violence while in police cus- 
tody. On April 27, 1994, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that 
enhanced the rights of individuals placed under arrest by stipu- 
lating elaborate guidelines for arrest, detention, and interroga- 
tion. 

High Courts 

There are eighteen high courts for India's twenty-five states, 
six union territories, and one national capital territory. Some 
high courts serve more than one state or union territory. For 
example, the high court of the union territory of Chandigarh 
also serves Punjab and Haryana, and the high court in Gauhati 
(in Meghalaya) serves Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, 
Manipur, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh. As part of the judi- 
cial system, the high courts are institutionally independent of 
state legislatures and executives. The president appoints state 
high court chief justices after consulting with the chief justice 
of the Supreme Court and the governor of the state. The presi- 
dent also consults with the chief justice of the state high court 
before he appoints other high court justices. Furthermore, the 
president may also exercise the right to transfer high court jus- 
tices without consultation. These personnel matters are becom- 
ing more politicized as chief ministers of states endeavor to 
exert their influence with New Delhi and the prime minister 
exerts influence over the president to secure politically advan- 
tageous appointments. 

Each high court is a court of record exercising original and 
appellate jurisdiction within its respective state or territory. It 
also has the power to issue appropriate writs in cases involving 
constitutionally guaranteed Fundamental Rights. The high 
court supervises all courts within its jurisdiction, except for 
those dealing with the armed forces, and may transfer constitu- 
tional cases to itself from subordinate courts (see Criminal Law 
and Procedure, ch. 10). The high courts have original jurisdic- 
tion on revenue matters. They try original criminal cases by a 
jury, but not civil cases. 

Lower Courts 

States are divided into districts (zillas), and within each a 
judge presides as a district judge over civil cases. A sessions 
judge presides over criminal cases. The judges are appointed 



452 



The Supreme Court, New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 



by the governor in consultation with the state's high court. Dis- 
trict courts are subordinate to the authority of their high court. 

There is a hierarchy of judicial officials below the district 
level. Many officials are selected through competitive examina- 
tion by the state's public service commission. Civil cases at the 
subdistrict level are filed in ?7zwrm/(subdistrict) courts. Lesser 
criminal cases are entrusted to the courts of subordinate magis- 
trates functioning under the supervisory authority of a district 
magistrate. All magistrates are under the supervision of the 
high court. At the village level, disputes are frequently resolved 
by panchayats or lok adalats (people's courts). 

The judicial system retains substantial legitimacy in the eyes 
of many Indians despite its politicization since the 1970s. In 
fact, as illustrated by the rise of social action litigation in the 
1980s and 1990s, many Indians turn to the courts to redress 



453 



India: A Country Study 



grievances with other social and political institutions. It is fre- 
quently observed that Indians are highly litigious, which has 
contributed to a growing backlog of cases. Indeed, the 
Supreme Court was reported to have more than 150,000 cases 
pending in 1990, the high courts had some 2 million cases 
pending, and the lower courts had a substantially greater back- 
log. Research findings in the early 1990s show that the backlogs 
at levels below the Supreme Court are the result of delays in 
the litigation process and the large number of decisions that 
are appealed and not the result of an increase in the number 
of new cases filed. Coupled with public perceptions of politici- 
zation, the growing inability of the courts to resolve disputes 
expeditiously threatens to erode the remaining legitimacy of 
the judicial system. 

Election Commission 

Article 324 of the constitution establishes an independent 
Election Commission to supervise parliamentary and state elec- 
tions. Supervising elections in the world's largest democracy is 
by any standard an immense undertaking. Some 521 million 
people were eligible to vote in 1991. Efforts are made to see 
that polling booths are situated no more than two kilometers 
from a voter's place of residence. In 1991, this objective 
required some 600,000 polling stations for the country's 3,941 
state legislative assembly and 543 parliamentary constituencies. 
To attempt to ensure fair elections, the Election Commission 
deployed more than 3.5 million officials, most of whom were 
temporarily seconded from the government bureaucracy, and 
2 million police, paramilitary, and military forces. 

Over the years, the Election Commission's enforcement of 
India's remarkably strict election laws grew increasingly lax. As 
a consequence, candidates flagrantly violated laws limiting 
campaign expenditures. Elections became increasingly violent 
(350 persons were killed during the 1991 campaign, including 
five Lok Sabha and twenty-one state assembly candidates), and 
voter intimidation and fraud proliferated. 

The appointment of T.N. Seshan as chief election commis- 
sioner in 1991 reinvigorated the Election Commission and 
curbed the illegal manipulation of India's electoral system. By 
cancelling or repolling elections where improprieties had 
occurred, disciplining errant poll officers, and fighting for the 
right to deploy paramilitary forces in sensitive areas, Seshan 
forced candidates to take the Election Commission's code of 



454 



Government and Politics 



conduct seriously and strengthened its supervisory machinery. 
In Uttar Pradesh, where more than 100 persons were killed in 
the 1991 elections, Seshan succeeded in reducing the number 
killed to two in the November 1993 assembly elections by 
enforcing compulsory deposit of all licensed firearms, banning 
unauthorized vehicular traffic, and supplementing local police 
with paramilitary units. In state assembly elections in Andhra 
Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, and Sikkim, after raising ceilings for 
campaign expenditures to realistic levels, Seshan succeeded in 
getting candidates to comply with these limits by deploying 336 
audit officers to keep daily accounts of the candidates' election 
expenditures. Although Seshan has received enthusiastic sup- 
port from the public, he has stirred great controversy among 
the country's politicians. In October 1993, the Supreme Court 
issued a ruling that confirmed the supremacy of the chief elec- 
tion commissioner, thereby deflecting an effort to rein in Ses- 
han by appointing an additional two election commissioners. 
Congress (I)'s attempt to curb Seshan's powers through a con- 
stitutional amendment was foiled after a public outcry weak- 
ened its support in Parliament. 

State Governments and Territories 

India has twenty-five states, six union territories, and one 
national capital territory, with populations ranging from 
406,000 (Sikkim) to 139 million (Uttar Pradesh). Ten states 
each have more than 40 million people, making them country- 
like in significance (see Structure and Dynamics, ch. 2) . There 
are eighteen official Scheduled Languages (see Glossary), 
clearly defined since the reorganization of states along linguis- 
tic lines in the 1950s and 1960s (see The Social Context of Lan- 
guages, ch. 4). Social structures within states vary considerably, 
and they encompass a great deal of cultural diversity, as those 
who have watched India's Republic Day (January 26) celebra- 
tions will attest (see Larger Kinship Groups, ch. 5). 

The constitution provides for a legislature in each state and 
territory. Most states have unicameral legislatures, but Andhra 
Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Tamil 
Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh have bicameral legislatures. The 
lower house, known as the vidhan sabha, or legislative assembly, 
is the real seat of legislative power. Where an upper house 
exists, it is known as the vidhan parishad, or legislative council; 
council functions are advisory, and any objections expressed to 
a bill may be overridden if the assembly passes the bill a second 



455 



India: A Country Study 



time. Members of the assembly serve five-year terms after being 
chosen by direct elections from local constituencies. Their 
numbers vary, from a minimum of sixty to a maximum of 500. 
Members of the council are selected through a combination of 
direct election, indirect election, and nomination. Their six- 
year terms are staggered so that one-third of the membership is 
renewed every two vears. Whether in the upper or lower house, 
membership in the assembly has come to reflect the predomi- 
nantly rural demography of most states and the distribution of 
social power resulting from the state's agrarian and caste struc- 
tures. 

The structure of state governments is similar to that of the 
central government. In the executive branch, the governor 
plays a role analogous to that of the president, and the elected 
chief minister presides over a council of ministers drawn from 
the legislature in a manner similar to the prime minister. Many 
of the governor's duties are honorific; however, the governor 
also has considerable power. Like the president, the governor 
selects who may attempt to form a government; he may also 
dismiss a state's government and dissolve its legislative assem- 
bly. All bills that the state legislature passes must receive the 
assent of the governor. The governor may return bills other 
than money bills to the assembly. The governor may also 
decide to send a bill for consideration to the president, who 
has the power to promulgate ordinances. The governor may 
also recommend to the president that President's Rule be 
invoked. Governors are appointed to office for a five-year term 
by the president on the advice of the prime minister, and their 
conduct is supposed to be above politics. 

Since 1967 most state legislatures have come under the con- 
trol of parties in opposition to the majority in Parliament, and 
governors have frequently acted as agents of the ruling party in 
New Delhi. Increasingly, governors are appointed more for 
their loyalty to the prime minister than for their distinguished 
achievements and discretion. The politicization of gubernato- 
rial appointments has become such a widespread practice that 
in 1989, shortly after the National Front government replaced 
the Congress (I) government, Prime Minister V.P. Singh 
(1989-90) asked eighteen governors to resign so that he could 
replace them with his own choices. Governors not only attempt 
to keep opposition state governments in line, but also, while 
keeping the state bureaucracy in place, have exercised their 



456 



Government and Politics 



power to dismiss the chief minister and his or her council of 
ministers. 

The strength of the central government relative to the states 
is especially apparent in constitutional provisions for central 
intervention into state jurisdictions. Article 3 of the constitu- 
tion authorizes Parliament, by a simple majority vote, to estab- 
lish or eliminate states and union territories or change their 
boundaries and names. The emergency powers granted to the 
central government by the constitution enable it, under certain 
circumstances, to acquire the powers of a unitary state. The 
central government can also dismiss a state government 
through President's Rule. Article 249 of the constitution 
enables a two-thirds vote of the Rajya Sabha to empower Parlia- 
ment to pass binding legislation for any of the subjects on the 
State List. Articles 256 and 257 require states to comply with 
laws passed by Parliament and with the executive authority of 
the central government. The articles empower the central gov- 
ernment to issue directives instructing states on compliance in 
these matters. Article 200 also enables a state governor, under 
certain circumstances, to refuse to give assent to bills passed by 
the state legislature and instead refer them to the president for 
review. 

The central government exerts control over state govern- 
ments through the financial resources at its command. The 
central government distributes taxes and grants-in-aid through 
the decisions of finance commissions, usually convened every 
five years as stipulated by Article 275. The central government 
also distributes substantial grants through its development 
plans as elaborated by the Planning Commission. The depen- 
dence of state governments on grants and disbursements grew 
throughout the 1980s as states began to run up fiscal deficits 
and the share of transfers from New Delhi increased. The 
power and influence of central government finances also can 
be seen in the substantial funds allocated under the central 
government's five-year plans to such areas as public health and 
agriculture that are constitutionally under the State List (see 
Health Care, ch. 2; Development Programs, ch. 7). 

Besides its twenty-five states, India has seven centrally super- 
vised territories. Six are union territories; one is the National 
Capital Territory of Delhi. Jurisdictions for territories are 
smaller than states and less populous. The central government 
administers union territories through either a lieutenant gov- 
ernor or a chief commissioner who is appointed by the presi- 



457 



India: A Country Study 

dent on the advice of the prime minister. Each territory also 
has a council of ministers, a legislature, and a high court; how- 
ever, Parliament may also pass legislation on issues in union ter- 
ritories that in the case of states are usually reserved for state 
assemblies. The Sixty-ninth Amendment, passed in December 
1991, made Delhi the national capital territory effective Febru- 
ary 1, 1992. Although not having the same status as statehood, 
Delhi was given the power of direct election of members of its 
legislative assembly and the power to pass its own laws. 

Local Government 

The district is the principal subdivision within the state 
(union territories are not subdivided). There are 476 districts 
in India; the districts vary in size and population. The average 
size of a district is approximately 4,300 square kilometers, and 
the average population numbered nearly 1.8 million in the 
early 1990s. The district collector, a member of the Indian 
Administrative Service, is the preeminent official in the district 
(see The Civil Service, this ch.). During the colonial period, 
the collector was responsible for collecting revenue and main- 
taining law and order. In the 1990s, the collector's role in most 
states is confined to heading the district revenue department 
and coordinating the efforts of the other departments, such as 
agriculture, irrigation, public works, forestry, and public 
health, that are responsible for promoting economic develop- 
ment and social welfare. 

Districts are subdivided into taluqs or tehsils, areas that con- 
tain from 200 to 600 villages. The taluqdar or tehsildar, who 
serves in much the same capacity as the collector, is the chief 
member of the taluq revenue department and is the preemi- 
nent official at this level. Economic development and social 
welfare departments are also likely to have offices at the taluq 
level. Although the revenue department may have village rep- 
resentatives, generally known as patwaris (village record-keep- 
ers), to maintain land records, the development and welfare 
departments generally do not have offices below the taluq level. 

Article 40 of the constitution directs the government to 
establish panchayats to serve as institutions of local self-govern- 
ment. Most states began implementing this Directive Principle 
along the lines of the recommendations of the government's 
Balwantrai Mehta Commission report. According to these rec- 
ommendations, the popularly elected village council (gram pan- 
chayat) is the basic unit. Village council chairs, elected by the 



458 



The Vidhana Saudha, the seat of the Karnataka state 

legislature, Bangalore 
Courtesy Robert L. Warden 

members of the village council, serve as members of the block 
council (panchayat samiti). A block is a large subunit of a dis- 
trict. In some states, blocks are coterminous with taluqs or teh- 
sils. In other states, taluqs or tehsils are divided into blocks. The 
district council (zilla parishad) is the top level of the system. Its 
jurisdiction includes all village and block councils within a dis- 
trict. Its membership includes the block council chairs. 

Deficient in funds and authority, the panchayats in most 
states were largely inactive until the late 1970s. However, efforts 
were then initiated to reinvigorate the panchayats. West Bengal 
led the way by transferring substantial funds and authority over 
rural development projects to the panchayats and then holding 
popular elections for panchayat representatives at all three lev- 
els in which political parties were allowed to field candidates 
for the first time. In the mid-1980s, the state of Karnataka also 
made important efforts to revive the panchayats. 

In 1989 Rajiv Gandhi's government took two major initia- 
tives designed to enhance the panchayats' role in local govern- 
ment and economic development. It initiated the Jawahar 
Employment Plan (Jawahar Rozgar Yojana), which provided 
funding directly to village councils to create jobs for the unem- 



459 



India: A Country Study 

ployed through public works projects. Rajiv Gandhi's govern- 
ment also proposed the Sixty-fourth Amendment Bill to make 
it mandatory for all states to establish a three-tiered (village, 
block, and district) system of panchayats in which representa- 
tives would be directly elected for five-year terms. Panchayats 
were to be given expanded authority and funding over local 
development efforts. Despite the popular appeal of transfer- 
ring power to panchayats, the Sixty-fourth Amendment Bill was 
rejected by the Rajya Sabha. Its hasty introduction in an elec- 
tion year made it appear to be a popular gimmick. Opposition 
to the bill also arose from those who feared that the transfer of 
authority from state governments to panchayats was designed to 
reduce the power of state legislatures under opposition control 
and promote "greater centralization through decentralization" 
by enabling the central government to establish direct relations 
with panchayats. 

On December 22, 1992, the Congress (I) government passed 
the Seventy-third Amendment, which gave panchayats constitu- 
tional status (previously panchayat matters were considered a 
state subject). The amendment also institutionalized a three- 
tiered system of panchayats (except for states with a population 
of less than 2 million), with panchayats at the village, block, and 
district levels. The amendment also stipulated that all panchayat 
members be elected for five-year terms in elections supervised 
by state election commissions. 

The 26 percent of the population living in urban areas are 
governed by municipal corporations and municipal councils. 
The municipal corporations governing the larger cities are 
composed of elected councils and a president or mayor elected 
from within the council. The state governor appoints a com- 
missioner who acts as the chief executive of the municipal cor- 
poration. The municipal councils administering the smaller 
cities have elected committees or boards. The municipal gov- 
ernment is responsible for education, health, sanitation, safety, 
and maintaining roads and other public facilities. The coun- 
try's municipal governments have long been troubled, in part 
because of their limited authority and lack of funds. The fre- 
quent intervention of state governments to suspend the activi- 
ties of municipal administrations has also undermined them. 
For instance, state or union territory governments suspended 
the elected bodies of forty-four out of sixty-six municipal corpo- 
rations in 1986. The Seventy-fourth Amendment was passed in 
December 1992 in order to revive municipal governments. 



460 



Government and Politics 



Among other things, it mandates that elections for municipal 
bodies must be held within six months of the date of their dis- 
solution. The amendment also provides for financial review of 
the municipalities in order to enable recommendations con- 
cerning the distribution of proceeds from taxes, duties, tolls, 
and fees. 

The Civil Service 

During the colonial period, the British built up the elite 
Indian Civil Service, often referred to as the "steel frame" of 
the British Raj. Nehru and other leaders of the independence 
movement initially viewed the colonial civil service as an instru- 
ment of foreign domination, but by 1947 they had come to 
appreciate the advantages of having a highly qualified institu- 
tionalized administration in place, especially at a time when 
social tensions threatened national unity and public order. 

The constitution established the Indian Administrative Ser- 
vice to replace the colonial Indian Civil Service and ensure uni- 
form and impartial standards of administration in selected 
fields, promote effective coordination in social and economic 
development, and encourage a national point of view. In the 
early 1990s, this small elite accounted for fewer than 5,000 of 
the total 17 million central government employees. Recruits 
appointed by the Union Public Service Commission are univer- 
sity graduates selected through a rigorous system of written and 
oral examinations. In 1988 only about 150 out of a candidate 
pool of approximately 85,000 recruits received appointments 
in the Indian Administrative Service. Indian Administrative 
Service officers are primarily from the more affluent and edu- 
cated classes. However, efforts to recruit women and individu- 
als from the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have 
enhanced the diversity of the civil service. 

Recruits are trained as administrative generalists at an acad- 
emy at Mussoorie (in Uttar Pradesh). After a period of appren- 
ticeship and probation in the central and state governments, 
an Indian Administrative Service officer is assigned to increas- 
ingly more responsible positions, such as a district collector 
after six or seven years. Approximately 70 percent of all officers 
serve in state administrations; the rest serve in the central gov- 
ernment. 

A larger organization, the Central Public Services, staffs a 
broad variety of administrative bureaus ranging from the 
Indian Foreign Service to the Audits and Accounts Service and 



461 



India: A Country Study 

the Postal Service. The states (but not Delhi or the union terri- 
tories) have independent services within their own jurisdic- 
tions that are regulated by local laws and public service 
commissions. The governor usually appoints members of the 
state public services upon the recommendation of the state 
public service commission. To a large extent, states depend 
upon nationwide bodies, such as the Indian Administrative Ser- 
vice and Indian Police Service, to staff top administrative posts. 

Although the elite public services continue to command 
great prestige, their social status declined in the decades after 
independence. In the 1990s, India's most capable youths 
increasingly are attracted to private-sector employment where 
salaries are substantially higher. Public opinion of civil servants 
has also been lowered by popular perceptions that bureaucrats 
are unresponsive to public needs and are corrupt. Although 
the ranks of the civil service are filled with many dedicated 
individuals, corruption has been a growing problem as civil ser- 
vants have become subject to intense political pressures. 

The Political Process 

The decline of the Congress (I) since the late 1980s has 
brought an end to the dominant single-party system that had 
long characterized India's politics. Under the old system, con- 
flict within the Congress was often a more important political 
dynamic than was conflict between the Congress and the oppo- 
sition. The Congress had set the political agenda and the oppo- 
sition responded. A new party system, in which the Congress 
(I) is merely one of several major participants, was in place by 
1989 (see fig. 15). As often as not in the mid-1990s, the Con- 
gress (I) seems to respond to the initiatives of other parties 
rather than set its own political agenda. 

Elections 

At least once every five years, India's Election Commission 
supervises one of the largest, most complex exercises of collec- 
tive action in the world. India's elections in the 1990s involve 
overseeing an electorate of about 521 million voters who travel 
to nearly 600,000 polling stations to chose from some 8,950 
candidates representing roughly 162 parties. The elections 
reveal much about Indian society. Candidates span a wide spec- 
trum of backgrounds, including former royalty, cinema super- 
stars, religious holy men, war heroes, and a growing number of 



462 



Government and Politics 



farmers. Campaigns utilize communications technologies rang- 
ing from the latest video van with two-way screens to the tradi- 
tional rumor traveling by word of mouth. Increasing violence 
also has come to characterize elections. In 1991, some 350 peo- 
ple, including former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, four other 
parliamentary candidates, and twenty-one candidates running 
in state legislative assembly elections, were killed in election- 
related violence. 

Political Parties 

India's party system is in the throes of historic change. The 
1989 general elections brought the era of Congress dominance 
to an end. Even though the Congress (I) regained power in 
1991, it was no longer the pivot around which the party system 
revolved. Instead, it represented just one strategy for organiz- 
ing a political majority, and a declining one at that. While the 
Congress (I) was encountering growing difficulties in maintain- 
ing its coalition of upper-caste elites, Muslims, Scheduled 
Castes, and Scheduled Tribes, the BJP was endeavoring to orga- 
nize a new majority around the appeal of Hindu nationalism. 
The Janata Dal and the BSP, among others, were attempting to 
fashion a new majority out of the increasingly assertive Back- 
ward Classes, Dalits, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and 
religious minorities. 

The Congress 

The Congress has, by any standards, remarkable political 
accomplishments to its credit. As the Indian National Con- 
gress, its guidance fashioned a nation out of an extraordinarily 
heterogeneous ensemble of peoples. The party has played an 
important role in establishing the foundations of perhaps the 
most durable democratic political system in the developing 
world. As scholars Francis Robinson and Paul R. Brass point 
out, the Congress constituted one of the few political organiza- 
tions in the annals of decolonialization to "make the transition 
from being sole representative of the nationalist cause to being 
just one element of a competitive party system." 

The Congress dominated Indian politics from indepen- 
dence until 1967. Prior to 1967, the Congress had never won 
less than 73 percent of the seats in Parliament. The party won 
every state government election except two — most often exclu- 
sively, but also through coalitions — and until 1967 it never won 



463 



India: A Country Study 




464 



Government and Politics 



less than 60 percent of all elections for seats in the state legisla- 
tive assemblies. 

There were four factors that accounted for this dominance. 
First, the party acquired a tremendous amount of good will and 
political capital from its leadership of the nationalist struggle. 
Party chiefs gained substantial popular respect for the years in 
jail and other deprivations that they personally endured. The 
shared experience of the independence struggle fostered a 
sense of cohesion, which was important in maintaining unity in 
the face of the party's internal pluralism. 

The second factor was that the Congress was the only party 
with an organization extending across the nation and down to 
the village level. The party's federal structure was based on a 
system of internal democracy that functioned to resolve dis- 
putes among its members and maintain party cohesion. Inter- 
nal party elections also served to legitimate the party 
leadership, train party workers in the skills of political competi- 
tion, and create channels of upward mobility that rewarded its 
most capable members. 

A third factor was that the Congress achieved its position of 
political dominance by creating an organization that adjusted 
to local circumstances rather than transformed them, often 
reaching the village through local "big men" (bare admi) who 
controlled village "vote banks." These local elites, who owed 
their position to their traditional social status and their control 
over land, formed factions that competed for power within the 
Congress. The internal party democracy and the Congress's 
subsequent electoral success ultimately reinforced the local 
power of these traditional elites and enabled the party to adjust 
to changes in local balances of power. The nonideological 
pragmatism of local party leadership made it possible to coopt 
issues that contributed to opposition party success and even 
incorporate successful opposition leaders into the party. Intra- 
party competition served to channel information about local 
circumstances up the party hierarchy. 

Fourth, patronage was the oil that lubricated the party 
machine. As the state expanded its development role, it accu- 
mulated more resources that could be distributed to party 
members. The growing pool of opportunities and resources 
facilitated the party's ability to accommodate conflict among its 
members. The Congress enjoyed the benefits of a "virtuous 
cycle," in which its electoral success gave it access to economic 



465 



Ind i a : A Cou n try St u dy 

and political resources that enabled the partv to attract new 

supporters. 

The halcvon days of what Indian political scientist Rajni 
Kothari has called "the Congress svstem" ended with the een- 
eral elections in 1967. The party lost seventy-eight seats in the 
Tok Sabha. retaining a majority of onlv twentv-three seats. Even 
more indicative of the Congress setback was its loss of control 
over six of the sixteen state legislatures that held elections. The 
proximate causes of the reversal included the failure of the 
monsoons in 1965 and 1966 and the subsequent hardship 
throughout northern and eastern India, and the unpopular 
currency devaluation in 1966. However, profound changes in 
India's polity also contributed to the decline of the Congress. 
The rapid .growth of the electorate, which increased by 45 per- 
cent from 1952 to 1967. brought an influx of new voters less 
appreciative of the Congress's role in the independence move- 
ment. Moreover, the simultaneous spread of democratic values 
produced a political awakening that mobilized new groups and 
created a more pluralistic constellation of political interests. 
The development of new and more-differentiated identities 
and patterns of political cleavage made it virtually impossible 
for the Congress to contain the competition of its members 
within its organization. Dissidence and ultimately defection 
greatlv weakened the Congress's electoral performance. 

It was in this context that Indira Gandhi asserted her inde- 
pendence from the leaders of the partv organization by 
attempting to take the partv in a more populist direction. She 
ordered the nationalization of India's fourteen largest banks in 
1969.. and then she supported former labor leader and Acting 
President Yarahagiri Yenkata Giri's candidacy for president 
despite the fact that the partv organization had already nomi- 
nated the more conservative Xeelam Sanjiva Reddv .After Giri's 
election, the partv organization expelled Indira Gandhi from 
the Congress and ordered the parliamentary partv to choose a 
new prime minister. Instead. 226 of the 291 Congress members 
of Parliament continued to support Indira Gandhi. The Con- 
gress split into two in 1969. the new factions being the Con- 
gress (O) — for Organisation — and Mrs. Gandhi's Congress 
(R) — for Requisition. The Congress (R) continued in power 
with the support of non-Congress groups, principally the Com- 
munist Partv of India I CPI ) and the Dravida Munnetra 
Kazhagam (DMK — Dravidian Progressive Federation). 



466 



Government and Politics 



With the Congress (O) controlling most of the party organi- 
zation, Indira Gandhi adopted a new strategy to mobilize popu- 
lar support. For the first time ever, she ordered parliamentary 
elections to be held separately from elections for the state gov- 
ernment. This delinking was designed to reduce the power of 
the Congress (O)'s state-level political machines in national 
elections. Mrs. Gandhi traveled throughout the country, ener- 
getically campaigning on the slogan "garibi hatao" (eliminate 
poverty), thereby bypassing the traditional Congress networks 
of political support. The strategy proved successful, and the 
Congress (R) won a dramatic victory. In the 1971 elections for 
the Lok Sabha, the Congress (R) garnered 44 percent of the 
vote, earning it 352 seats. The Congress (O) won only sixteen 
seats and 10 percent of the vote. The next year, after leading 
India to victory over Pakistan in the war for Bangladesh's inde- 
pendence, Indira Gandhi and the Congress (R) further consol- 
idated their control over the country by winning fourteen of 
sixteen state assembly elections and victories in 70 percent of 
all seats contested. 

The public expected Indira Gandhi to deliver on her man- 
date to remove poverty. However, the country experienced a 
severe drought in 1971 and 1972, leading to food shortages, 
and the price of food rose 20 percent in the spring of 1973. 
The decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting 
Countries (OPEC) to quadruple oil prices in 1973-74 also led 
to inflation and increased unemployment. Jayaprakash (J.P) 
Narayan, a socialist leader in the preindependence Indian 
National Congress who, after 1947, left to conduct social work 
in the Sarvodaya movement (sarvodaya means uplift of all), 
came out of retirement to lead what eventually became widely 
known as the 'J.P. movement." Under Narayan's leadership, the 
movement toppled the government of Gujarat and almost 
brought down the government in Bihar; Narayan advocated a 
radical regeneration of public morality that he labelled "total 
revolution." 

After the Allahabad High Court ruled that Mrs. Gandhi had 
committed electoral law violations and Narayan addressed a 
massive demonstration in New Delhi, at Indira Gandhi's 
behest, the president proclaimed an Emergency on June 25, 
1975. That night, Indira Gandhi ordered the arrest of almost 
all the leaders of the opposition, including dissidents within 
the Congress. In all, more than 110,000 persons were detained 
without trial during the Emergency. 



467 



India: A Country Study 

Indira Gandhi's rule during the Emergency alienated her 
popular support. After postponing elections for a year follow- 
ing the expiration of the five-year term of the Lok Sabha, she 
called for new elections in March 1977. The major opposition 
party leaders, many of whom had developed a rapport while 
they were imprisoned together under the Emergency regime, 
united under the banner of the Janata Party. By framing the 
key issue of the election as "democracy versus dictatorship," the 
Janata Party — the largest opposition party — appealed to the 
public's democratic values to rout the Congress (R). The vote 
share of the Congress (R) dropped to 34.5 percent, and the 
number of its seats in Parliament plunged from 352 to 154. 
Indira Gandhi lost her seat. 

The inability of Janata Party factions to agree proved the 
party's undoing. Indira Gandhi returned to win the January 
1980 elections after forming a new party, the Congress (I — for 
Indira), in 1978. 

The Congress (I) largely succeeded in reconstructing the 
traditional Congress electoral support base of Brahmans (see 
Glossary), Muslims, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes 
that had kept Congress in power in New Delhi during the three 
decades prior to 1977. The Congress (I)'s share of the vote 
increased by 8.2 percent to 42.7 percent of the total vote, and 
its number of seats in the Lok Sabha grew to 353, a majority of 
about two-thirds. This success approximated the levels of sup- 
port of the Congress dominance from 1947 to 1967. Yet, as 
political scientist Myron Weiner observed, "The Congress party 
that won in 1980 was not the Congress party that had governed 
India in the 1950s and 1960s, or even the early 1970s. The party 
was organizationally weak and the electoral victory was prima- 
rily Mrs. Gandhi's rather than the party's." As a consequence, 
the Congress's appeal to its supporters was much more tenuous 
than it had been in previous decades. 

Indira Gandhi's dependence on her flamboyant son Sanjay 
and, after his accidental death in 1980, on her more reserved 
son Rajiv gives testimony to the personalization and centraliza- 
tion of power within the Congress (I). Having developed a 
means to mobilize support without a party organization, she 
paid little attention to maintaining that support. Rather than 
allowing intraparty elections to resolve conflicts and select 
party leaders, Indira Gandhi preferred to fill party posts herself 
with those loyal to her. As a result, party leaders at the state 
level lost their legitimacy among the rank and file because their 



468 




Even if 1 die in the 
Service of Ihe Nation 

Imu^jjpoudofii 



mm 



iQ 



Campaign advertisement for Youth Congress candidate, West Bengal 

Courtesy India Abroad News Service 



positions depended on the whims of Indira Gandhi rather than 
on the extent of their popular support. In addition, centraliza- 
tion and the demise of democracy within the party disrupted 
the flow of information about local circumstances to party lead- 
ers and curtailed the ability of the Congress (I) to adjust to 
social change and incorporate new leaders. 

When Rajiv Gandhi took control after his mother's assassina- 
tion in November 1984, he attempted to breathe new life into 
the Congress (I) organization. However, the massive electoral 
victory that the Congress (I) scored under Rajiv's leadership 
just two months after his mother's assassination gave him nei- 
ther the skill nor the authority to succeed in this endeavor. 
Rajiv did, however, attempt to remove the more unsavory ele- 
ments within the party organization. He denied nominations to 
one-third of the incumbent members of Parliament during the 
1984 Lok Sabha campaign, and he refused to nominate two of 
every five incumbents in the state legislative assembly elections 
held in March 1985. 

Another of Rajiv's early successes was the passage of the Anti- 
Defection Bill in January 1985 in an effort to end the bribery 
that lured legislators to cross partisan lines. Speaking at the 
Indian National Congress centenary celebrations in Bombay 



469 



India: A Country Study 

(officially called Mumbai as of 1995), Rajiv launched a vitriolic 
attack on the "culture of corruption" that had become so per- 
vasive in the Congress (I). However, the old guard showed little 
enthusiasm for reform. As time passed, Rajiv's position was 
weakened by the losses that the party suffered in a series of 
state assembly elections and by his government's involvement 
in corruption scandals. Ultimately, Rajiv was unable to over- 
come the resistance within the party to internal elections and 
reforms. Ironically, as Rajiv's position within the party weak- 
ened, he turned for advice to many of the wheelers and dealers 
of his mother's regime whom he had previously banished. 

The frustration of Rajiv Gandhi's promising early initiatives 
meant that the Congress (I) had no issues on which to cam- 
paign as the end of his five-year term approached. On May 15, 
1989, just months before its term was to expire, the Congress 
(I) introduced amendments that proposed to decentralize gov- 
ernment authority to panchayat and municipal government 
institutions. Opposition parties, many of whom were on record 
as favoring decentralization of government power, vehemently 
resisted the Congress (I) initiative. They charged that the ini- 
tiative did not truly decentralize power but instead enabled the 
central government to circumvent state governments (many of 
which were controlled by the opposition) by transferring 
authority from state to local government and strengthening 
the links between central and local governments. After the 
Congress (I) failed to win the two-thirds vote required to pass 
the legislation in the Rajya Sabha on October 13, 1989, it called 
for new parliamentary elections and made "jana shakti" (power 
to the people) its main campaign slogan. 

The Congress (I) retained formidable campaign advantages 
over the opposition. The October 17, 1989, announcement of 
elections took the opposition parties by surprise and gave them 
little time to form electoral alliances. The Congress (I) also bla- 
tantly used the government-controlled television and radio to 
promote Rajiv Gandhi. In addition, the Congress (I) campaign 
once again enjoyed vastly superior financing. It distributed 
some 100,000 posters and 15,000 banners to each of its 510 
candidates. It provided every candidate with six or seven vehi- 
cles, and it commissioned advertising agencies to make a total 
of ten video films to promote its campaign. 

The results of the 1989 elections were more of a rebuff to 
the Congress (I) than a mandate for the opposition. Although 
the Congress (I) remained the largest party in Parliament with 



470 



Government and Politics 



197 seats, it was unable to form a government. Instead, the Ja- 
nata Dal, which had 143 seats, united with its National Front 
allies to form a minority government precariously dependent 
on the support of the BJP (eighty-five seats) and the commu- 
nist parties (forty-five seats). Although the Congress (I) lost 
more than 50 percent of its seats in Parliament, its share of the 
vote dropped only from 48.1 percent to 39.5 percent of the 
vote. The Congress (I) share of the vote was still more than 
double that of the next largest party, the Janata Dal, which 
received support from 17.8 percent of the electorate. More 
grave for the long-term future of the Congress (I) was the ero- 
sion of vital elements of the traditional coalition of support for 
the Congress (I) in North India. Alienated by the Congress 
(I)'s cultivation of Hindu activists, Muslims defected to the Jan- 
ata Dal in large numbers. The Congress (I) simultaneously lost 
a substantial share of Scheduled Caste voters to the BSP in 
Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh and to the 
Indian People's Front in Bihar. 

To offset these losses, the Congress (I) attempted to play a 
"Hindu card." On August 14, 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 
that no parties or groups could disturb the status quo of the 
Babri Masjid, a sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya, Uttar 
Pradesh. The mosque was controversial because Hindu nation- 
alists claim it was on the site of the birthplace of the Hindu god 
Ram and that, as such, the use by Muslims was sacrilegious (see 
Vishnu, ch. 3). Despite the court ruling, in September the Con- 
gress (I) entered into an agreement with the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad (VHP — World Hindu Council), a conservative reli- 
gious organization with close ties to Hindu nationalists, to 
allow the VHP to proceed with a ceremony to lay the founda- 
tion for the Ramjanmabhumi (birthplace of Ram) Temple. 
(The VHP had been working toward this goal since 1984.) In 
return, the Congress (I) secured the VHP's agreement to per- 
form the ceremony on property adjacent to the Babri Masjid 
that was not in dispute. By reaching this agreement, the Con- 
gress (I) attempted to appeal to Hindu activists while retaining 
Muslim support. Rajiv Gandhi's decision to kick off his cam- 
paign less than six kilometers from the Babri Masjid and his 
appeal to voters that they vote for the Congress (I) if they 
wished to bring about "Ram Rajya" (the rule of Ram) were 
other elements of the Congress (I)'s strategy to attract the 
Hindu vote (see Political Issues, this ch.) 



471 



India: A Country Study 



The 1991 elections returned the Congress (I) to power but 
did not reverse important trends in the party's decline. The 
Congress (I) won 227 seats, up from 197 in 1989, but its share 
of the vote dropped from 39.5 percent in 1989 to 37.6 percent. 
Greater division within the opposition rather than growing 
popularity of the Congress (I) was the key element in the 
party's securing an increased number of seats. Also troubling 
was the further decline of the Congress (I) in heavily popu- 
lated Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which together account for 
more than 25 percent of all seats in Parliament. In Uttar 
Pradesh, the number of seats that the Congress (I) was able to 
win went down from fifteen to two, and its share of the vote 
dropped from 32 percent to 20 percent. In Bihar the seats won 
by the Congress (I) fell from four to one, and the Congress (I) 
share of the vote was reduced from 28 percent to 22 percent. 
The Congress (I) problems in these states, which until 1989 
had been bastions of its strength, were reinforced by the party's 
poor showing in the November 1993 state elections. These 
elections were characterized by the further disintegration of 
the traditional Congress coalition, with Brahmans and other 
upper castes defecting to the BJP and Scheduled Castes and 
Muslims defecting to the Janata Dal, the Samajwadi Party 
(Socialist Party), and the BSP. 

Strong evidence indicates that the Congress (I) would have 
fared significantly worse had it not been for the assassination of 
Rajiv Gandhi in the middle of the elections. A wave of sympathy 
similar to that which helped elect Rajiv after the assassination 
of his mother increased the Congress (I) support. In the round 
of voting that took place before Rajiv's death, the Congress (I) 
won only 26 percent of the seats and 33 percent of the vote. In 
the votes that occurred after Rajiv's death, the Congress (I) 
won 58 percent of the seats and 40 percent of the popular vote. 
It may also be that Rajiv's demise ended the "anti-Congressism" 
that had pervaded the political system as a result of his family's 
dynastic domination of Indian politics through its control over 
the Congress. 

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil suicide bomber 
affiliated with the Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 
(LTTE) during a political campaign in May 1991. Only after his 
assassination did hope for reforming the Congress (I) reap- 
pear. The end of three generations of Nehru-Gandhi family 
leadership left Rajiv's coterie of political manipulators in 
search of a new kingpin. The bankruptcy of the Congress (I) 



472 



Government and Politics 



leadership was highlighted by the fact that they initially turned 
to Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv's Italian-born wife, to lead the party. 
Sonia's primary qualification was that she was Rajiv's widow. 
She had never held elected office and, during her early years in 
India, she had expressed great disdain for political life. How- 
ever, although she did not assume a leadership role, she contin- 
ued to be seen as a "kingmaker" in the Congress (I). Her advice 
was sought after, and she was called on to lead the party in the 
mid-1990s. An unusual public speech by Sonia Gandhi criticiz- 
ing the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao in August 1995 fur- 
ther fueled speculation that she was a candidate for political 
leadership. 

Sonia Gandhi's refusal in 1991 to become president of the 
Congress (I) led the mantle of party leadership to fall on Rao. 
Rao was a septuagenarian former professor who had retired 
from politics before the 1991 elections .after undergoing heart- 
bypass surgery. Rao had a conciliatory demeanor and was 
acceptable to the party's contending factions. Paradoxically, 
the precariously positioned Rao was able to take more substan- 
tial steps in the direction of party reform than his predecessors. 
First, Rao had to demonstrate that he could mobilize popular 
support for himself and the party, a vital currency of power for 
any Congress (I) leader. He did so in the November 15, 1991, 
by-elections by winning his own seat in Andhra Pradesh unop- 
posed and leading the party to victory in a total of eight of the 
fifteen parliamentary by-elections. By the end of 1991, Rao had 
succeeded in initiating the first intraparty elections in the Con- 
gress in almost twenty years. Although there was widespread 
manipulation by local party bosses, the elections enhanced the 
legitimacy of party leaders and held forth the prospect of a 
rejuvenated party organization. The process culminated in 
April 1992 at the All-India Congress (I) Committee at Tirupati, 
Andhra Pradesh, where elections were held for the ten vacant 
seats in the Congress Working Committee. 

In the wake of the Tirupati session, Rao became less inter- 
ested in promoting party democracy and more concerned with 
consolidating his own position. The change was especially 
apparent in the 1993 All-India Congress (I) Committee session 
at Surajkund (in Haryana), where Rao's supporters lavishly 
praised the prime minister and coercively silenced his oppo- 
nents. However, Rao's image was damaged in July 1993 after 
Harshad Mehta, a stockbroker under indictment for allegedly 
playing a leading role in a US$2 billion stock scam in 1992, 



473 



India: A Country Study 

accused Rao of personally accepting a bribe that he had deliv- 
ered on November 4, 1991. The extent of the press coverage of 
the charges and their apparent credibility among the public 
was evidence of the pervasive public cynicism toward politi- 
cians. Rao's stock in the party and Congress (I)'s position 
within Parliament were greatly weakened. On July 28, 1993, his 
government barely survived a no-confidence motion in the Lok 
Sabha. Rao's position was temporarily strengthened at the end 
of 1993 when he was able to cobble together a parliamentary 
majority. However, support for Rao and the Congress (I) 
declined again in 1994. The party was rocked by a scandal relat- 
ing to the procurement of sugar stocks that cost the govern- 
ment an estimated Rs6.5 billion (US$210 million; for value of 
the rupee — see Glossary) and by losses in legislative assembly 
elections in Andhra Pradesh — Rao's home state, where he per- 
sonally took control over the campaign — and Karnataka. The 
Congress (I) again lost in three of four major states in elecdons 
held in the spring of 1995. The political fallout in New Delhi 
was an increase in dissident activity within the Congress (I) led 
by former cabinet members Narain Dutt Tiwari and Arjun 
Singh and other Rao rivals who sought to split the Congress 
and form a new party. 

Opposition Parties 

Opposition to the Congress has always been fragmented. 
Opposition parties range from Hindu nationalist parties such 
as the BJP on the right to communist parties on the left (see 
table 33, Appendix). The divisiveness of the opposition, com- 
bined with the "first-past-the-post" electoral system, has enabled 
the Congress to dominate Indian politics without ever winning 
a majority of the vote from the national electorate. The extent 
of electoral alliances among the opposition is an important 
predictor of its ability to win seats in Parliament. The first two 
instances when the opposition succeeded in forming a govern- 
ment at the center occurred after it united under the Janata 
Party banner in 1977 and after the formation of the Janata Dal 
and the National Front in 1988. In each of these cases, the 
unity that was facilitated by anti-Congress sentiment prior to 
the elections collapsed in the face of rivalry and ambition once 
the opposition came into power. 

The Rise and Decline of "Janata Politics" 

Prior to 1967, the opposition was divided into an array of 



474 



Prime Minister RV. Narasimha Rao 
Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 



small parties. While the Congress garnered between 45 percent 
and 48 percent of the vote, no opposition party gained as much 
as 11 percent, and during the entire period, only two parties 
won 10 percent. Furthermore, in each election, independent 
candidates won between 12 percent and 20 percent of the vote. 

The opposition's first significant attempt to achieve electoral 
unity occurred during the 1967 elections when opposition 
party alliances won control of their state governments in Bihar, 
Kerala, Orissa, Punjab, and West Bengal. In Rajasthan an oppo- 
sition coalition prevented the Congress from winning a major- 
ity in the state legislature and forced it to recruit independents 
to form a government. The Congress electoral debacle encour- 
aged even more dissidence within the party, and in a matter of 
weeks after the elections, defections brought down Congress 
governments in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. 



475 



India: A Country Study 

By July 1967, state governments of two-thirds of the country 
were under opposition rule. However, opposition rule in many 
cases was short-lived. The aftermath of the 1967 elections initi- 
ated a climate of politics by defection in which the Congress, 
and to a lesser extent the opposition, attempted to overthrow 
governments by winning over their state legislators with prom- 
ises of greater political power and outright bribes. Needless to 
say, this period seriously undermined the ability of most parties 
to discipline their members. The increase in opposition-ruled 
state governments after 1967 also prompted the Congress to 
use President's Rule to dismiss opposition-led state govern- 
ments with increasing frequency (see Emergency Provisions 
and Authoritarian Powers, this ch.). 

Although the centrist and right-wing opposition formed a 
"grand alliance" during the 1971 parliamentary elections, it 
was not until the general elections of 1977 that opposition 
efforts culminated in electoral success at the national level. 
Imprisoned together under the authoritarian measures of the 
Emergency, India's senior opposition leaders found their per- 
sonal animosity toward Indira Gandhi and the Congress to be a 
powerful motivation to overcome their division and rivalry. In 
January 1977, opposition parties reactivated a pre-Emergency 
multiparty front, campaigned under the banner of the Janata 
Party, and won a dramatic electoral victory in March 1977. The 
Janata Party was made up of the Congress (O), thejana Sangh, 
the Bharatiya Lok Dal (Indian People Party), the Samajwadi 
Party (Socialist Party), a handful of imprisoned Congress dissi- 
dents, and the Congress for Democracy — a group led by Sched- 
uled Caste leader Jagjivan Ram that had splintered off from the 
Congress during the election campaign. 

Despite the diversity of this assemblage of parties and the dif- 
ferent social strata that they represented, members of the Ja- 
nata Party achieved surprising ideological and programmatic 
consensus by passing a program stressing decentralization, 
development of rural industries, and employment opportuni- 
ties. It was not ideology, but rather an inability to consolidate 
partisan organizations and political rivalry among the leader- 
ship that led to the demise of the Janata government in 1979. 
The Janata's three most senior leaders — Morarji Desai, Charan 
Singh, and Jagjivan Ram — each aspired to be prime minister. 
The rivalry continued during Desai's tenure (March 1977-July 
1979). Desai, Charan Singh, and Ram continually conspired to 
discredit each other. Their connivances ultimately discredited 



476 



Government and Politics 



the Janata Party and allowed the Congress (I) to return to 
power in 1980. 

Just as key defections from the Congress were essential to the 
Janata electoral success in 1977, so too did V.P. Singh's defec- 
tion from the Congress (I) in 1987 enable opposition factions 
from the Janata Party and Bharatiya Lok Dal to unite the Janata 
Dal in 1988. Regional parties, such as the Telugu Desam Party 
(Telugu National Party), the DMK, and the Asom Gana Pa- 
rishad (AGP — Assam People's Assembly), together formed the 
National Front, led by Janata Dal, which defeated Rajiv Gan- 
dhi's Congress (I) in the 1989 parliamentary elections. With 
V.P. Singh as prime minister, the National Front government 
earned the appellation of "the crutch government" because it 
depended on the support of the Communist Party of India 
(Marxist — CPI (M)) on its left and the BJP on the right. 

On August 7, 1990, V.P. Singh suddenly announced that his 
government would implement the recommendations of the 
Mandal Commission (see Glossary) to reserve 27 percent of 
central government jobs for the Backward Classes, defined to 
include around 52 percent of the population. Although Singh's 
Janata Dal had pledged to implement the Mandal Commission 
recommendations as part of its election manifesto, his 
announcement led to riots throughout North India. Some sev- 
enty-five upper-caste youths died after resorting to self-immola- 
tion to dramatize their opposition, and almost 200 others were 
killed in clashes with the police. 

BJP president Lai Kishan (L.K.) Advani announced that he 
would traverse the country on a pilgrimage to Ayodhya where 
he would lead Hindu activists in the construction of the Ram- 
janmabhumi Temple on the site of the Babri Masjid. As the pil- 
grimage progressed, riots between Hindus and Muslims broke 
out throughout the country. The National Front government 
decided to end the agitation, and Janata Dal chief minister of 
Bihar, Laloo Prasad Yadav, arrested Advani on October 23, 
1990. On October 30, religious militants attempted to storm 
the Babri Masjid despite a massive military presence, and as 
many as twenty-six activists were killed. The BJP's withdrawal of 
support for the National Front government proved fatal, and 
V.P. Singh lost a parliamentary vote of confidence on Novem- 
ber 7, 1990. 

Two days before the vote, Chandra Shekhar, an ambitious 
Janata Dal rival who had been kept out of the National Front 
government, joined with Devi Lai, a former deputy prime min- 



477 



India: A Country Study 

ister under V.P. Singh, to form the Samajwadi Janata Party — 
Samajwadi meaning socialist — with a total of sixty Lok Sabha 
members. The day after the collapse of the National Front gov- 
ernment, Chandra Shekhar informed the president that by 
gaining the backing of the Congress (I) and its electoral allies 
he enjoyed the support of 280 members of the Lok Sabha, and 
he demanded the right to constitute a new government. Even 
though his rump party accounted for only one-ninth of the 
members of the Lok Sabha, Chandra Shekhar succeeded in 
forming a new minority government and becoming prime min- 
ister (with Devi Lai as deputy prime minister) . However, Chan- 
dra Shekhar's government fell less than four months later, after 
the Congress (I) withdrew its support. 

The Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Janata Party declined 
after the fall of the Chandra Shekhar government. In the May- 
June 1991 parliamentary elections, their share of the vote 
dropped from 17.8 percent to 15.1 percent, and the number of 
seats in Parliament that they won fell from 142 to sixty-one. 
The parties were able to win seats only in Bihar, Orissa, and 
Uttar Pradesh. The factional rivalry and ineffectiveness that 
impeded the National Front government's efforts to provide 
effective government tarnished the Janata Dal image. In the 
absence of strong national leadership, the party was rendered a 
confederation of ambitious regional leaders whose rivalry pre- 
vented the establishment of a united party organization. The 
Janata Dai's persistent backing of the Mandal Commission rec- 
ommendations made the party highly unpopular among high- 
caste people in the middle and upper classes, creating fund- 
raising difficulties. Although the Janata Dal won state elections 
in Karnataka in 1994 and Bihar in the spring of 1995, its poor 
showing in most other states gave the impression that its sup- 
port was receding to a few regional bastions. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism 

The BJP is unique among India's political parties in that nei- 
ther it nor its political predecessors were ever associated with 
the Congress. Instead, it grew out of an alternative nationalist 
organization — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS — 
National Volunteer Organisation). The BJP still is affiliated 
with the network of organizations popularly referred to as the 
RSS family. The RSS was founded in 1925 by Keshav Baliram 
Hedgewar. Until 1928 a member of the Congress with radical 
nationalist political leanings, Hedgewar had grown increasingly 



478 



Government and Politics 



disenchanted with the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. 
Hedgewar was particularly critical of Gandhi's emphasis on 
nonviolence and civil disobedience, which he felt discouraged 
the forceful political action necessary to gain independence. 
He established the RSS as an organization that would provide 
training in martial arts and spiritual matters to rejuvenate the 
spiritual life of the Hindu community and build its unity. 

Hedgewar and his successor, M.S. Golwalkar, scrupulously 
endeavored to define the RSS's identity as a cultural organiza- 
tion that was not directly involved in politics. However, its rap- 
idly growing membership and the paramilitary-like uniforms 
and discipline of its activists made the political potential of the 
RSS apparent to everyone on the political scene. There was 
considerable sentiment within the Congress that RSS members 
should be permitted to join, and, in fact, on October 7, 1947, 
the Congress Working Committee voted to allow in RSS mem- 
bers. But in November 1947, the Congress passed a rule requir- 
ing RSS members to give up their affiliation before joining. 
The RSS was banned in 1948 after Nathuram Godse, a former 
RSS member, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. The ban was 
lifted in 1949 only after the RSS drafted an organizational con- 
stitution that was acceptable to the government. Intensely loyal 
RSS members refused to give up their affiliation to join the 
Congress and, instead, channeled their political energies to the 
Jana Sangh (People's Union) after its founding in 1951. 

The Jana Sangh grew slowly during the 1950s and 1960s, 
despite the efforts of RSS members, who quickly took control 
of the party's organization. Although the Jana Sangh suc- 
ceeded in displacing the Hindu Mahasabha (a communal party 
established in 1914 as a counter to Muslim separatists) as the 
preeminent party of Hindu activists in the Indian political sys- 
tem, it failed to develop into a major rival to the Congress. 
According to political scientist Bruce Graham, this failure 
occurred because of the Jana Sangh's inability "to transcend 
the limitations of its origins," in particular, its identification 
with the Hindi-speaking, northern heartland and its Brahmani- 
cal interpretation of Hinduism rather than the more inclusive 
and syncretic values of popular Hinduism. However, the experi- 
ence of the Jana Sangh during the 1970s, especially its increas- 
ing resort to populism and agitational tactics, provided 
essential ingredients for the success of the BJP in the 1980s. 

In 1977 the Jana Sangh joined the Janata Party, which 
defeated Indira Gandhi and the Congress (I) in parliamentary 



479 



India: A Country Study 

elections and formed a government through the end of 1979. 
The rapid expansion of the RSS under Janata rule soon 
brought calls for all members of the RSS family to merge with 
Janata Party affiliates. Ultimately, intraparty tensions impelled 
those affiliated with the Jana Sangh to leave the Janata Party 
and establish a new party — the BJP. 

The BJP was formed in April 1980, under the leadership of 
Atal Behari Vajpayee. Although the party welcomed members 
of the RSS, the BJP's effort to draw from the legacies of the Ja- 
nata Party as well as that of the Jana Sangh were suggested by its 
new name, its choice of a green and saffron flag similar to that 
of the Janata Party rather than the solid saffron flag of the old 
Jana Sangh, its adoption of a decentralized organizational 
structure along the lines of the Janata Party rather than the 
more centralized model of the Jana Sangh, and its inclusion in 
its working committee of several non-Jana Sangh individuals, 
including Sikandar Bakht — a Muslim. The invocation of Gan- 
dhian socialism as one of the guiding principles of the BJP 
rather than the doctrine of "integral humanism" associated 
with the Jana Sangh was another indication of the impact of 
the party members' experience in the Janata Party and "J. P. 
movement." 

The new synthesis, however, failed to achieve political suc- 
cess. In 1984 the BJP won only two seats in the parliamentary 
elections. In the wake of the 1984 elections, the BJP shifted 
course. Advani replaced Vajpayee as party president. Under 
Advani's leadership, the BJP appealed to Hindu activists by crit- 
icizing measures it construed as pandering to minorities and 
advocating the repeal of the special status given to the Muslim 
majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Simultaneously, it coop- 
erated more closely with other RSS affiliates, particularly the 
VHP. During the 1980s, the BJP-VHP combine developed into a 
dynamic political force through its brilliant use of religious 
symbolism to rouse the passions of the public. The BJP and 
VHP attained national prominence through their campaign to 
convert back to Hinduism members of the Scheduled Castes 
who had converted to Islam. The VHP also agitated to reclaim 
the Babri Masjid site and encouraged villagers throughout the 
country to hold religious ceremonies to consecrate bricks 
made out of their own clay and send them to be used in the 
construction of the Ramjanmabhumi Temple in Ayodhya. 

In the general elections of 1991, the BJP expanded its sup- 
port more than did any other party. Its number of seats in the 



480 



Government and Politics 



Lok Sabha increased from eighty-five to 119, and its vote share 
grew from 11.4 percent to 21.0 percent. The party was particu- 
larly successful in Uttar Pradesh, where it increased its share of 
the vote from 7.6 percent (eight seats) in 1989 to 35.3 percent 
(fifty seats) in 1991, and in Gujarat, where its votes and seats 
climbed from 30 percent (twelve seats) to 52 percent (twenty 
seats). In addition, BJP support appeared to be spreading into 
new areas. In Karnataka, its vote rose from 2.6 percent to 28.1 
percent, and in West Bengal the BJP's share of the vote 
expanded from 1.6 to 12.0 percent. However, the elections also 
revealed some of the limitations of the BJP juggernaut. Exit 
polls showed that while the BJP received more upper-caste sup- 
port than all other parties and made inroads into the constitu- 
ency of Backward Classes, it did poorly among Scheduled 
Castes and Scheduled Tribes, constituencies that it had long 
attempted to cultivate. In Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, 
and Rajasthan, three state governments run by the BJP since 
1990, the BJP lost parliamentary seats although its share of the 
vote increased. In Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP also won con- 
trol of the state government in 1991, veteran political analyst 
Paul R. Brass cogently argued that the BJP had reached the lim- 
its of its social base of support. 

The limits of the BJP's Hindu nationalist strategy were fur- 
ther revealed by its losses in the November 1993 state elections. 
The party lost control over the state-level governments of 
Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh while 
winning power in Gujarat and the National Capital Territory of 
Delhi. In the aftermath of the Hindu activists' dismantling of 
the Babri Masjid in December 1992, the evocative symbolism of 
the Ramjanmabhumi controversy had apparently lost its capac- 
ity to mobilize popular support. Nevertheless, the BJP, by giving 
more emphasis to anticorruption and social issues, achieved 
unprecedented success in South India, where it won 28 percent 
of the vote and came in second in elections in Karnataka in 
November 1994. In the spring of 1995, the BJP won state elec- 
tions in Gujarat and became the junior partner of a coalition 
with Shiv Sena (Army of Shivaji — Shivaji Bhonsle was a seven- 
teenth-century Maratha guerrilla leader who kept Mughal 
armies at bay) in Maharashtra (see The Marathas, ch. 1). In 
view of the potential demise of the Congress (I), the BJP stands 
poised to emerge as India's largest party in the 1990s. However, 
it is likely to have to play down the more divisive aspects of 



481 



India: A Country Study 

Hindu nationalism and find other issues to expand its support 
if it is to win a majority in the Lok Sabha. 

Communist Parties 

The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded on 
December 26, 1925, at an all-India conference held at Kanpur, 
Uttar Pradesh, in late December 1925 and early January 1926. 
Communists participated in the independence struggle and, as 
members of the Congress Socialist Party, became a formidable 
presence on the socialist wing of the Indian National Congress. 
They were expelled from the Congress Socialist Party in March 
1940, after allegations that the communists had disrupted party 
activities and were intent on coopting party organizations. 
Indeed, by the time the communists were expelled, they had 
gained control over the entire Congress Socialist Party units in 
what were to become the southern states of Kerala, Tamil 
Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh. Communists remained members 
of the Indian National Congress although their support of the 
British war effort after the German invasion of the Soviet 
Union and their nationalist policy supporting the right of reli- 
gious minorities to secede from India were diametrically 
opposed to Congress policies. As a result, the communists 
became isolated within the Congress. After independence, 
communists organized a peasant uprising in the Telangana 
region in the northern part of what was to become Andhra 
Pradesh. The uprising was suppressed only after the central 
government sent in the army. Starting in 1951, the CPI shifted 
to a more moderate strategy of seeking to bring communism to 
India within the constraints of Indian democracy. In 1957 the 
CPI was elected to rule the state government of Kerala only to 
have the government dismissed and President's Rule declared 
in 1959. 

In 1964, in conjunction with the widening rift between 
China and the Soviet Union, a large leftist faction of the CPI 
leadership, based predominantly in Kerala and West Bengal, 
split from the party to form the Communist Party of India 
(Marxist), or CPI (M). The CPI (M)-led coalition victory in the 
1967 West Bengal state elections spurred dissension within the 
party because a Maoist faction headed a peasant rebellion in 
the Naxalbari area of the state, just south of Darjiling (Darjee- 
ling). The suppression of the Naxalbari uprising under the 
direction of the CPI (M) -controlled Home Ministry of the state 
government led to denunciations by Maoist revolutionary fac- 



482 



A communist campaign rally, Kerala 
Courtesy Mary Orr 



tions across the country. These groups — commonly referred to 
as Naxalites — sparked new uprisings in the Srikakulam region 
of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and other parts of West Bengal. In 
1969 several Naxalite factions joined together to form a new 
party — the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) — CPI 
(M-L). However, pursuit of insurrectionary tactics in the face of 
harsh repression by the government along with an array of 
ideological disputes kept Naxalite factions isolated in their 
local bases. 

In the 1990s, the CPI (M) enjoys the most political strength 
of any communist group. Nationally, its share of the vote has 
gradually increased from 4.2 percent in 1967 to 6.7 percent in 
1991, but it has largely remained confined to Kerala, Tripura, 
and West Bengal. In Kerala the CPI (M) in coalition with other 
parties wrested control from the Congress and its allies (fre- 



483 



India: A Country Study 

quently including the CPI) in 1967, in 1980, and in 1987. Sup- 
port for the CPI (M) in Kerala in general elections has ranged 
from 19 percent to 26 percent, but the party has never won 
more than nine of Kerala's twenty seats in Parliament. From 
1977 to 1989, the CPI (M) dominated Tripura's state govern- 
ment. It won two parliamentary seats in 1971, 1980, and 1984, 
but it lost all of its seats in 1977, 1989, and 1991. In West Ben- 
gal, the CPI (M) has ruled the state government with a coali- 
tion of other leftist parties since 1977, and, since that time, the 
party has also dominated West Bengal's parliamentary delega- 
tion. 

Support for the CPI is more evenly spread nationwide, but it 
is weak and in decline. The CPI share of the parliamentary vote 
has more than halved from 5.2 percent in 1967 to 2.5 percent 
in 1991. 

In 1982 a CPI (M-L) faction entered the parliamentary 
arena by forming the Indian People's Front. In the 1989 gen- 
eral elections, the front won a parliamentary seat in western 
Bihar, and in 1990 it won seven seats in the Bihar legislative 
assembly. However, the Indian People's Front lost its parlia- 
mentary seat in the 1991 parliamentary elections when its vote 
in Bihar declined by some 20 percent. 

Regional Parties 

Given India's social, cultural, and historical diversity, it is 
only natural that regional parties play an important role in the 
country's political life. Because of India's federal system, state 
assembly votes are held in an electoral arena that often enables 
regional parties to obtain power by espousing issues of regional 
concern. Simultaneously, the single-member district, first-past- 
the-post electoral system has given the advantage to national 
parties, such as the Congress, which possess a realistic chance 
of gaining or retaining power at the national level and the 
opportunity to use central government resources to reward 
their supporters. Although regional parties have exercised 
authority at the state level, collectively they receive only from 5 
to 10 percent of the national vote in parliamentary elections. 
Only during the governments of the Janata Party (1977-79) 
and the National Front (1989-90) have they participated in 
forming the central government. However, as India's party sys- 
tem becomes more fragmented with the decline of the Con- 
gress (I), the regional parties are likely to play an important 
role at the national level. 



484 



Government and Politics 



Regional political parties have been strongest in Tamil 
Nadu, where they have dominated state politics since 1967. 
Regional parties in the state trace their roots to the establish- 
ment of the Justice Party by non-Brahman social elites in 1916 
and the development of the non-Bhraman Self-Respect Move- 
ment, founded in 1925 by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker. As leader 
of the Justice Party, in 1944 Ramaswamy renamed the party the 
Dravida Kazhagam (DK — Dravidian Federation) and 
demanded the establishment of an independent state called 
Dravidasthan. In 1949, charismatic film script writer C.N. Anna- 
durai, who was chafing under Ramaswamy's authoritarian lead- 
ership, split from the DK to found the DMK in an attempt to 
achieve the goals of Tamil nationalism through the electoral 
process. The DMK dropped its demand for Dravidasthan in 
1963 but played a prominent role in the agitations that success- 
fully defeated attempts to impose the northern Indian lan- 
guage of Hindi as the official national language in the mid- 
1960s. The DMK routed the Congress in the 1967 elections in 
Tamil Nadu and took control of the state government. With 
the deterioration of Annadurai's health, another screen writer, 
M. Karunanidhi, became chief minster in 1968 and took con- 
trol of the party after Annadurai's death in 1969. 

Karunanidhi's control over the party was soon challenged by 
M.G. Ramachandran (best known by his initials, M.G.R.), one 
of South India's most popular film stars. In 1972 M.G.R. split 
from the DMK to form the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra 
Kazhagam (AIADMK). Under his leadership, the AIADMK 
dominated Tamil politics at the state level from 1977 through 
1989. The importance of personal charisma in Tamil politics 
was dramatized by the struggle for control over the AIADMK 
after M.G.R's death in 1988. His widow, Janaki, herself a former 
film star, vied for control with Jayalalitha, an actress who had 
played M.G.R. s leading lady in several films. The rivalry 
allowed the DMK to gain control over the state government in 
1989. The AIADMK, securely under the control of Jayalalitha, 
who was cast as a "revolutionary leader," recaptured the state 
government in 1991. However, since 1980, the Congress (I), 
usually in alliance with the AIADMK, has won a majority of 
Tamil Nadu's seats in Parliament. 

After three decades of Congress rule, the politics of Andhra 
Pradesh during the 1980s also became dominated by a charis- 
matic film star who stressed regional issues. In 1982 N.T Rama 
Rao (popularly known as N.T.R.), an actor who frequently 



485 



India: A Country Study 

played Hindu deities in Telugu-language films, formed the Te- 
lugu Desam. The party ruled the state from 1983 to 1989. It 
also won thirty of Andhra Pradesh's forty-two parliamentary 
seats in 1984. With the objective of enhancing Andhra 
Pradesh's regional autonomy, N.T.R. played a key role in the 
formation of the National Front coalition government in 1989. 
However, in the 1989 elections, the Telugu Desam won only 
two parliamentary seats and lost control over the state govern- 
ment to the Congress (I). It was able to improve its showing to 
thirteen seats in Parliament in the 1991 elections. The Telugu 
Desam returned to power in Andhra Pradesh after winning the 
state legislative assembly elections in November 1994. 

The Akali Dal (Eternal Party) claims to represent India's 
Sikhs, who are concentrated primarily in Punjab. It was first 
formed in the early 1920s to return control of gurdwaras (Sikh 
places of worship) to the orthodox Sikh religious community. 
During the 1960s, the Akali Dal played an important role in the 
struggle for the creation of Punjab as a separate state with a 
Sikh majority. Even with the majority Sikh population, the 
Akali Dai's political success has been limited by the Congress's 
ability to win votes from the Sikh community. The Akali Dal 
won nine of Punjab's thirteen parliamentary seats in the gen- 
eral elections of 1977 and seven in 1984 but only one in the 
1971 and 1980 elections. Similarly, the Akali Dal headed coali- 
tion state governments in 1967 and 1977 and formed the state 
government in 1985, but it lost state government elections to 
the Congress (R) in 1972, and to Congress (I) in 1980 and in 
1992. As the 1980s progressed, the Akali Dal became increas- 
ingly factionalized. In 1989 three Akali Dal factions ran in the 
elections, winning a total of seven seats. The Akali Dal factions 
boycotted parliamentary and state legislative elections that 
were held in February 1992. As a result, voter turnout dropped 
to 21.6 percent, and the Congress (I) won twelve of Punjab's 
thirteen seats in Parliament and a majority of seats in the legis- 
lative assembly (see Twentieth-Century Developments, ch. 3). 

The National Conference, based in Jammu and Kashmir, is a 
regional party, which, despite its overwhelmingly Muslim fol- 
lowing, refused to support the All-India Muslim League (Mus- 
lim League — see Glossary) during the independence 
movement; instead it allied itself with the Indian National Con- 
gress. The National Conference was closely identified with its 
leader, Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, a personal friend of 
Nehru, and, after Abdullah's death in 1982, with his son, 



486 



Government and Politics 



Farooq Abdullah. Friendship, however, did not prevent Nehru 
from imprisoning Sheikh Abdullah when he became con- 
cerned that the "Lion of Kashmir" was disposed to demand 
independence for his state. Ultimately, Sheikh Abdullah struck 
a deal with Indira Gandhi, and in 1975 he became chief minis- 
ter of Jammu and Kashmir. The National Conference 
remained Jammu and Kashmir's dominant party through the 
1980s and maintained control over the state government for 
most of the period. In parliamentary elections, it won one of 
Kashmir's six parliamentary seats in 1967, none in 1971, two in 
1977, and three in 1980, 1984, and 1989. However, popular 
support for the National Conference was badly eroded by alle- 
gations of electoral fraud in the 1987 state elections — which 
were won by the National Conference in alliance with the Con- 
gress (I) — and the widespread corruption of the subsequent 
state government under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah. 
There was little popular sympathy for Farooq Abdullah and the 
National Conference even after the government was dissolved 
and President's Rule declared in 1990. Jammu and Kashmir 
remained under President's Rule through 1995, and the 
absence of elections makes it difficult to ascertain the extent of 
the National Conference's popular support. Nevertheless, it 
appears that Farooq and the National Conference remain dis- 
credited. 

During the late 1980s, the AGP rose to power in Assam on 
the crest of Assamese nationalism. Immigration to Assam — pri- 
marily by Muslim Bengalis from neighboring Bangladesh — had 
aroused concern that the Assamese would become a minority 
in their own state. By 1979 attention was focused on the contro- 
versial issue of determining how many immigrants would be 
allowed on the state's list of eligible voters. The Congress (I), 
which gained a substantial share of the immigrants' votes, took 
a more expansive view of who should be included while the 
Assamese nationalist organizations demanded a more restric- 
tive position. An attempt to hold state elections in February 
1983, and in effect to force the Assamese nationalists to accept 
the status quo, resulted in a breakdown of law and order and 
the deaths of more than 3,000 people. The subsequent forma- 
tion of a Congress (I) government led by Hiteshwar Saikia was 
widely viewed in Assam as illegitimate, and it was dissolved as 
part of the terms of the Assam Accord that was signed between 
Rajiv Gandhi and Assamese nationalists on August 15, 1985. 
The Assam Accord also included a compromise on the voter 



487 



India: A Country Study 

eligibility issue, settled the issue of the citizenship status of 
immigrants, and stipulated that new elections were to be held 
in December. The AGP was formed by Assamese student lead- 
ers after the signing of the accord, and the new party won the 
December 1985 elections with 35 percent of the vote and sixty- 
four of 108 seats in the state legislature. 

The victory of the AGP did not end the controversy over 
Assamese nationalism. The AGP was unable to implement the 
accord's provisions for disenfranchising and expelling illegal 
aliens, in part because Parliament passed legislation making it 
more difficult to prove illegal alien status. The AGP's failure to 
implement the accord along with the general ineffectiveness 
with which it operated the state government undercut its popu- 
lar support, and in November 1990 it was dismissed and Presi- 
dent's Rule declared. As the AGP floundered, other nationalist 
groups of agitators flourished. The United Liberation Front of 
Assam (ULFA) became the primary torchbearer of militant 
Assamese nationalism while the All Bodo Students' Union 
(ABSU) and Bodo People's Action Committee (BPAC) led an 
agitation for a separate homeland for the central plain tribal 
people of Assam (often called Bodos). By 1990 ULFA militants 
ran virtually a parallel government in the state, extorting huge 
sums from businesses in Assam, especially the Assamese tea 
industry. The ULFA was ultimately subdued through a shrewd 
combination of ruthless military repression and generous 
terms of surrender for many of its leaders. The ABSU/BPAC- 
led mass agitation lasted from March 1987 until February 1993 
when the ABSU signed an accord with the state government 
that had been under the Congress (I) control since 1991. The 
accord provided for the creation of a Bodoland Autonomous 
Council with jurisdiction over an area of 5,186 square kilome- 
ters and 2.1 million people within Assam. Nevertheless, Bodo 
agitation continued in the mid-1990s as a result of the demands 
of many Bodo leaders, who insisted that more territory be 
included under the Bodoland Autonomous Council. 

Caste-Based Parties 

One irony of Indian politics is that its modern secular 
democracy has enhanced rather than reduced the political 
salience of traditional forms of social identity such as caste. 
Part of the explanation for this development is that India's 
political parties have found the caste-based selection of candi- 
dates and appeals to the caste-based interests of the Indian 



488 



Woman voting, Uttar Pradesh 
Courtesy India Abroad News 
Service 



Muslim woman voting, Delhi 
Courtesy India Abroad News 
Service 



India: A Country Study 

electorate to be an effective way to win popular support. More 
fundamental has been the economic development and social 
mobility of those groups officially designated as Backward 
Classes and Scheduled Castes. Accounting for 52 and 15 per- 
cent of the population, respectively, the Backward Classes and 
Scheduled Castes, or Dalits as they prefer to be called, consti- 
tute a diverse range of middle, lower, and outcaste groups who 
have come to wield substantial power in most states. Indeed, 
one of the dramas of modern Indian politics has been the 
Backward Classes and Dalits' jettisoning of their political subor- 
dination to upper castes and their assertion of their own inter- 
ests. 

The Backward Classes are such a substantial constituency 
that almost all parties vie for their support. For instance, the 
Congress (I) in Maharashtra has long relied on Backward 
Classes' backing for its political success. The 1990s have seen a 
growing number of cases where parties, relying primarily on 
Backward Classes' support, often in alliance with Dalits and 
Muslims, catapult to power in India's states. Janata Dal govern- 
ments in Bihar and Karnataka are excellent examples of this 
strategy. An especially important development is the success of 
the Samajwadi Party, which under the leadership of Mulayam 
Singh Yadav won the 1993 assembly elections in India's most 
populous state, Uttar Pradesh, relying almost exclusively on 
Backward Classes and Muslim support in a coalition with the 
Dalit-supported BSP. 

The growing support of the BSP also reflects the importance 
of caste-based politics and the assertiveness of the Dalits in par- 
ticular. The BSP was founded by Kanshi Ram on April 13, 1984, 
the birthday of B.R. Ambedkar. Born as a Dalit in Punjab, Kan- 
shi Ram resigned from his position as a government employee 
in 1964 and, after working in various political positions, 
founded the All-India Backward, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled 
Tribe, Other Backward Classes, and Minority Communities 
Employees Federation (BAMCEF) in 1978. Although both the 
BAMCEF and BSP pursue strategies of building support among 
Backward Classes, Scheduled Tribes, and Muslims as well as 
Dalits, Kanshi Ram has been most successful in building sup- 
port among the Dalit Chamar (Leatherworker) caste in North 
India. In the November 1993 Uttar Pradesh state elections, 
Ram's BSP achieved the best showing of any Dalit-based party 
by winning sixty-seven seats. At the same time, the BSP 
increased its representation in the Madhya Pradesh state legis- 



490 



Government and Politics 



lature from two to twelve seats. On June 1, 1995, the BSP with- 
drew from the state government of Uttar Pradesh and, with the 
support of the BJP, formed a new government, making its 
leader, Mayawati, the first Dalit ever to become a chief minister 
of Uttar Pradesh. The alliance, however, was seen by observers 
as doomed because of political differences. 

Political Issues 

Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir 

Conflicts in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir are each the 
result of centralized power operating in a predominantly heter- 
ogeneous society. Although tensions in the two states have 
important historical roots, they have been fueled by contro- 
versy over the policies of India's central government. Opposi- 
tion is built upon the feeling that political power in New Delhi 
is inaccessible and unresponsive to local needs. Furthermore, 
in each case, the Congress (I) leadership has attempted to 
intervene in the conflicts to advance its partisan interests only 
to have its intervention backfire and aggravate regional ten- 
sions. 

The confrontation in Punjab began in 1973 when the Akali 
Dal issued the Anandpur Sahib Resolution calling for the estab- 
lishment of a "Sikh Autonomous Region" with its own constitu- 
tion. It also called for the transfer of Chandigarh, a union 
territory, to Punjab as the state's capital — promised by the cen- 
tral government in 1970 — and demanded that the central gov- 
ernment establish a more favorable allocation of river waters 
used for irrigation. A particular concern was the shared distri- 
bution of water from the Beas and Sutlej rivers with neighbor- 
ing Haryana (see Rivers, ch. 2). The Akali Dal further 
demanded changes involving greater symbolic recognition of 
Sikhism. These demands included the recognition of Amritsar, 
the site of the Sikhs' Golden Temple, as a holy city; exemption 
from antihijacking regulations to enable Sikhs flying on Indian 
airlines to wear their kirpan (ceremonial saber); and the pas- 
sage of the All-India Gurdwara Act to place the management of 
all gurdwaras in the country under a single administration (see 
Early History and Tenets, ch. 3). 

Akali Dal members were engaged in a heated competition 
with the Congress (I) over control of the Punjab assembly. It 
was in this context that the Congress (I) found it advantageous 
to encourage Sikh fundamentalism. Giani Zail Singh, who was 



491 



India: A Country Study 

the Congress (I) chief minister in Punjab from 1972 to 1977 
and minister of home affairs in the central government from 
1980 to 1982, developed links with the fiery Sikh militant Sant 
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. By encouraging Bhindranwale, 
the Congress (I) hoped to reap advantage from sowing division 
in the already fractious Akali Dal. However, what may have 
been good for the interests of the Congress (I) turned out to 
be bad for the country. By the spring of 1984, Bhindranwale 
and his followers had taken over the Akal Takht (Throne of the 
Eternal God) shrine facing the Golden Temple and trans- 
formed it into a headquarters and armory for Sikh militants. 
Indira Gandhi sent in the army, which, during a bloody three- 
day siege, almost destroyed the Akal Takht, did some damage 
to the Golden Temple, and killed Bhindranwale and hundreds 
of his followers (see Insurgent Movements and External Sub- 
version, ch. 10). The army's action generated widespread 
resentment among India's Sikhs. The subsequent assassination 
of Indira Gandhi by Sikh members of her bodyguard on Octo- 
ber 31, 1984, unleashed a wave of riots throughout India in 
which more than 2,700 Sikhs were killed. 

Rajiv Gandhi attempted to put an end to the crisis by signing 
an agreement with Akali Dal moderate Harchand Singh Lon- 
gowal in August 1985. The Gandhi-Longowal Accord acqui- 
esced to many Akali Dal demands and called for elections to 
put an end to central government control over the state gov- 
ernment through President's Rule, which had been in effect 
since October 1983. Although the accord was criticized by Sikh 
activists as being a sellout, it apparently had widespread sup- 
port, as evidenced by the public's defiance of the militants' call 
for a boycott of the ensuing elections and the mandate given to 
Akali Dal moderates to form a new government. Public support 
for the Akali Dal government, however, was soon undermined 
by Rajiv Gandhi's failure to fulfill his commitments, such as the 
transfer of Chandigarh to Punjab, as enunciated in the Gandhi- 
Longowal Accord. With the failure to implement the accord, 
the popularity of the Akali Dal state government led by Surjit 
Singh Barnala declined, and its internal divisions grew. As a 
result, its efforts to combat the militants' increasing violence 
became ineffective. In May 1987, the Punjab assembly was dis- 
solved and replaced with President's Rule. 

The violence of Sikh militants spread throughout Punjab 
during the 1980s. In many cases, activist groups became undis- 
ciplined or were taken over by criminals. Armed robbery, 



492 



Government and Politics 



extortion, and murder became a way of life. Police actions also 
became more repressive. The residents of Punjab were caught 
in a vise of indiscriminate militant and police violence. After an 
unprecedented five years of President's Rule, the central gov- 
ernment gambled by holding elections for Parliament and the 
state legislative assembly in February 1992. Most Akali Dal 
groups and militants called for a boycott of the poll, and the 
election turnout was a record low of 20 percent. Not surpris- 
ingly, the Congress (I) emerged victorious, winning twelve of 
thirteen seats in Parliament and control over the state govern- 
ment. After the elections, the police and paramilitary forces 
under the leadership of K.P.S. Gill scored a series of successes 
in infiltrating activist groups and capturing or killing their 
members. Popular participation in the conventional political 
process increased; voter turnout for municipal elections in Sep- 
tember 1992 and gram panchayats in January 1993 exceeded 70 
percent. Although violence diminished during 1993 and 1994, 
the sources of many of the tensions remained, and resentments 
among the Sikhs continue to simmer in the mid-1990s. 

Ethnic and regional tensions also raged out of control in the 
strategically sensitive Jammu and Kashmir. The conflict 
assumes considerable symbolic as well as strategic importance 
because, as India's only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and 
Kashmir validates India's national identity as a religiously and 
culturally diverse society held together by a common history 
and cultural heritage. The roots of the Kashmir conflict extend 
at least as far back as 1947 when Maharaja Hari Singh, the 
princely state's Hindu ruler, decided to cede his domain with 
its predominantly Muslim population to the Indian Union at a 
time when Kashmir was under attack by a Muslim paramilitary 
force supported by Pakistan. Tensions persisted through the 
mid-1980s. The National Conference, led by Sheikh Abdullah 
until his death in 1983, first supported the accession to India 
and its provisions under Article 370 of the constitution for spe- 
cial autonomy, but later made demands for greater autonomy 
as popular resentment against India's central government 
began to spread. The status of Kashmir was the cause of two 
wars between India and Pakistan, in 1947 and 1965, and was an 
issue in the third war, in 1971 (see The Experience of Wars, ch. 
10). 

The Kashmir crisis of the 1990s is reflective of trends occur- 
ring throughout the Indian polity: the increasing intervention 
of the central government in local affairs, the resort to coer- 



493 



India: A Country Study 

cion to resolve social conflict and maintain social order, and 
the increasing political assertiveness of the Indian public. The 
National Conference government, which had been elected in 
1983 under the leadership of Farooq Abdullah, son of Sheikh 
Abdullah, was brought down in 1984 after leaders of the Con- 
gress (I) supported Ghulam Mohammad Shah's split of the 
National Conference and formation of a separate government. 
The Congress (I) switched its support back to Farooq in 1986, 
and the National Conference under Farooq's leadership partic- 
ipated in the 1987 state elections in alliance with the Congress 
(I). The alliance served to discredit Farooq and the National 
Conference in the eyes of many Kashmiris, and the coalition 
faced stiff competition from an alliance of Muslim activists 
under the banner of the Muslim United Front. The National 
Conference-Congress (I) coalition won the election, but only 
after creating a popular perception of widespread election rig- 
ging. Farooq's government proved to be inept and corrupt, fur- 
ther alienating the Kashmiri public. The activists, feeling that 
they had been electorally defrauded, incited an increasing 
number of demonstrations, strikes, bombings, and assassina- 
tions. 

The problem reached a climax in December 1989 when mil- 
itants took as hostage the daughter of Mufti Mohammed 
Sayeed, the minister of home affairs of the newly formed 
National Front government. When the militants exchanged 
their hostage for the release of five jailed militant leaders, a 
jubilant public showed its support for the militants with massive 
demonstrations in Srinagar, the capital. It became obvious to 
all that Farooq's government had lost control over the state, 
and President's Rule was declared. Insurgency broke out as 
fighting spread between the Kashmiri militants and paramili- 
tary forces. Reports by human rights groups left little doubt 
that each side had perpetrated gross atrocities and that victims 
included large numbers of innocent civilians. The issue was fur- 
ther complicated by charges that the insurgents had received 
sanctuary and support from Pakistan and from movements like 
the Ekta Yatra (Unity Pilgrimage— a BJP political pilgrimage 
from the southern tip of India to Srinagar from December 
1991 to January 1992). 

The conflict raged through 1994 as the government sent in 
paramilitary and army troops in an effort to break the back of 
the resistance and convince the Kashmiri public of the futility 
of the struggle. By then the militants had fragmented into 



494 



Government and Politics 



more than 100 groups. The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation 
Front, which demands independence from both India and 
Pakistan, had the widest support, but a number of heavily 
armed groups, the most prominent being the Hezb-ul Muja- 
hideen, which favored union with Pakistan, also had support. 
Events offered a glimmer of hope that the crisis might be 
resolved through negotiation. Earlier, in November 1993, the 
government had successfully negotiated the settlement of a cri- 
sis at the Hazratbal — a Srinagar mosque, which is one of the 
holiest Muslim shrines in India because it is believed to house a 
hair of the Prophet Muhammad. The government negotiated 
the settlement with the All-Party Hurriyat Conference by agree- 
ing to the departure of the occupying militant forces. In April 
1994, the leaders of the conference further raised hopes by 
coming to New Delhi to discuss ways of resolving the conflict 
with the leaders of non-Muslim communities in Kashmir. The 
government responded by releasing more moderate activist 
leaders from prison and beginning preparations for elections. 
But with tension growing and the destruction in May 1995 by 
fire of a Sufi mausoleum and mosque in the town of Charar 
Sharif — each side blamed the other for the conflagration — the 
central government postponed plans for elections. This event 
posed new impediments to resolving the conflict. 

Hindu-Muslim Tensions 

The kindling of Hindu-Muslim tensions during the 1990s 
was neither a reawakening of ancient hatreds nor a conse- 
quence of religious fundamentalism. Rather it occurred 
because of the interaction between the various socioeconomic 
developments in India during the 1980s and 1990s and the 
strategies and tactics of India's politicians. 

Rapid urbanization has uprooted individuals from their pre- 
vious occupations and communities and placed many in com- 
petition for new livelihoods. Newcomers who succeed 
frequently arouse resentment, and many riots have targeted 
successful Muslim merchants, business owners, and Muslim 
returnees from the Persian Gulf states, where they often earn 
incomes many times higher than they would have earned in 
India. High-caste Hindus, fearing the loss of their social pres- 
tige, have provided an important social base for Hindu mili- 
tancy. Hard-pressed members of these high-caste groups have 
been an especially receptive constituency for appeals to curtail 
the "special privileges of pampered minorities." In addition, 



495 



India: A Country Study 

the economy was unable to provide jobs for all who wanted to 
enter the labor market, and the 1980s and early 1990s saw an 
increase in the ranks of the unemployed. Some of the unem- 
ployed have become involved in gangs whose strong-arm tactics 
are used by politicians wishing to intimidate or incite commu- 
nal tensions. Other unemployed youths join militant religious 
organizations like the Bajrang Dal (Party of the Adamani [Dia- 
mond] -Bodied, a reference to Bajrang, a Hindu god) and Shiv 
Sena. The militant groups provide security for temples and 
members of their religion but are also sources of communal 
violence. 

Changes in the nature of India's political process also have 
contributed to the rise of religious tensions. Analysts from a 
variety of perspectives have commented on the increasing will- 
ingness of India's politicians to exploit religious and ethnic ten- 
sions for short-term political gain, regardless of their longer- 
term social consequences. Political scientist Rajni Kothari, for 
example, charges that there has been a general decline in the 
morality of Indian politicians. He alleges that politicians play a 
"numbers game," in which they appeal to chauvinistic caste and 
religious sentiments to win elections, despite the longer-term 
social tensions that their campaigns create. The support of the 
Congress for Article 370 in the constitution, which provides a 
special status for the Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kash- 
mir, and the measures taken to provide India's Muslim commu- 
nity with distinctive rights have contributed to the popular 
resonance of the BJP's charges that the Congress (I) stands for 
minority appeasement and "pseudo-secularism." The violence 
of religious militants in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir has 
also contributed to sentiment among the Hindu majority that 
religious minorities employ aggressive tactics to win special 
concessions from the government. 

The 1985 Shah Bano controversy put state-religion relations 
in the forefront of the political agenda. Shah Bano was a sev- 
enty-three-year-old Muslim woman from Madhya Pradesh who 
filed for alimony after being divorced according to Muslim law 
by her husband after forty-three years of marriage. The 
Supreme Court ruled in Shah Bano's favor, creating outrage 
among sectors of the Muslim community who felt that the 
sharia (Islamic law), which does not provide for alimony, had 
been slighted. In apparent capitulation to this important politi- 
cal constituency, Rajiv Gandhi pushed the Muslim Women 
(Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill, which removed Muslim 



496 



Government and Politics 



divorce cases from India's civil law and recognized the jurisdic- 
tion of sharia. The legislation, in turn, enraged large sectors of 
Hindus, whose personal conduct is judged under India's secu- 
lar civil code. 

Shortly thereafter, in a ploy that Rajiv Gandhi may have mis- 
guidedly conceived to placate Hindu militants, the courts ruled 
that the doors of the Babri Masjid should be opened to Hindu 
worshipers. The VHP was joined by the BJP in a campaign to 
reclaim the disputed birthplace of Ram. In 1989 the VHP 
launched a campaign encouraging Hindu devotees from across 
India each to bring a brick from their villages to Ayodhya. Out- 
breaks of violence between Hindus and Muslims spread as the 
campaign progressed, and the BJP successfully prevailed upon 
the VHP to withdraw the campaign before the 1989 elections. 
Tensions heated up again in the summer of 1990 when BJP 
leader Advani embarked on a 10,000-kilometer tour of the 
country in a Toyota van decorated to resemble the mythologi- 
cal chariot of Ram. Advani's arrest did not prevent clashes at 
Ayodhya between paramilitary forces and Hindu activists; the 
clashes sparked a wave of communal violence and left more 
than 300 dead. 

The Ramjanmabhumi Temple mobilization appeared to pay 
substantial dividends in terms of the BJP's remarkable growth 
of support in North India in the 1991 elections, and the VHP 
and BJP kept the issue alive despite the fact that their actions 
put tremendous pressure on the newly elected BJP state gov- 
ernment in Uttar Pradesh. Its July 1992 kar sewa (mass mobili- 
zation force work service) to build the temple ended peacefully 
only through last-minute negotiations with Prime Minister Rao; 
Rao had been promised by BJP leader L.K. Advani that the 
December 6, 1992, kar sewa would also be peaceful. Despite 
Advani's promise, thousands of Hindu activists broke through a 
police cordon and destroyed the Babri Masjid (see Public Wor- 
ship, ch. 3). This event and the subsequent riots throughout 
the country left no doubt that tensions between Hindus and 
Muslims had reached a high pitch. 

During the following week, riots spread throughout the 
countryside, killing some 1,700 people. Riots broke out again 
in Bombay from January 9 through January 11, killing 500 
more people. In March 1993, the Bombay Stock Exchange and 
other prominent places in the city were shaken, and some 200 
people were killed by bombs that the central government 
alleges were placed by members of India's criminal underworld 



497 



India: A Country Study 



at the behest of Pakistan's intelligence service. The manipula- 
tion of India's religious tensions by militants, criminals, and 
politicians highlighted the extent to which religious sentiments 
in India had become an object of exploitation. Religious ten- 
sions eased somewhat and incidents of communal violence 
declined during the remainder of 1993 and through 1994, but 
the persistence of the social conditions that gave birth to vio- 
lence and the continued opportunism of India's politicians 
suggest that the relative peace may be only an interlude. 

Corruption and the Anti-Establishment Vote 

Corruption not only has become a pervasive aspect of 
Indian politics but also has become an increasingly important 
factor in Indian elections. The extensive role of the Indian 
state in providing services and promoting economic develop- 
ment has always created the opportunity for using public 
resources for private benefit. As government regulation of busi- 
ness was extended in the 1960s and corporate donations were 
banned in 1969, trading economic favors for under-the-table 
contributions to political parties became an increasingly wide- 
spread political practice. During the 1980s and 1990s, corrup- 
tion became associated with the occupants of the highest 
echelons of India's political system. Rajiv Gandhi's government 
was rocked by scandals, as was the government of P.V. 
Narasimha Rao. Politicians have become so closely identified 
with corruption in the public eye that a Times of India poll of 
1,554 adults in six metropolitan cities found that 98 percent of 
the public is convinced that politicians and ministers are cor- 
rupt, with 85 percent observing that corruption is on the 
increase. 

The prominence of political corruption in the 1990s is 
hardly unique to India. Other countries also have experienced 
corruption that has rocked their political systems. What is 
remarkable about India is the persistent anti-incumbent senti- 
ment among its electorate. Since Indira's victory in her 1971 
"garibi hatao" election, only one ruling party has been reelected 
to power in the central government. In an important sense, the 
exception proves the rule because the Congress (I) won reelec- 
tion in 1984 in no small measure because the electorate saw in 
Rajiv Gandhi a "Mr. Clean" who would lead a new generation of 
politicians in cleansing the political system. Anti-incumbent 
sentiment is just as strong at the state level, where the ruling 
parties of all political persuasions in India's major states lost 



498 




eleven of thirteen legislative assembly elections held from 1991 
through spring 1995. 

The Media 
The Press 

Compared with many other developing countries, the 
Indian press has flourished since independence and exercises 
a large degree of independence. British colonialism allowed 
for the development of a tradition of freedom of the press, and 
many of India's great English-language newspapers and some 
of its Indian-language press were begun during the nineteenth 
century. As India became independent, ownership of India's 
leading English-language newspapers was transferred from 
British to Indian business groups, and the fact that most 
English-language newspapers have the backing of large busi- 
ness houses has contributed to their independence from the 
government. The press has experienced impressive growth 
since independence. In 1950 there were 214 daily newspapers, 
with forty-four in English and the rest in Indian languages. By 
1990 the number of daily newspapers had grown to 2,856, with 
209 in English and 2,647 in indigenous languages. The expan- 
sion of literacy and the spread of consumerism during the 



499 



India: A Country Study 

1980s fueled the rapid growth of news weeklies and other peri- 
odicals. By 1993 India had 35,595 newspapers — of which 3,805 
were dailies — and other periodicals. Although the majority of 
publications are in indigenous languages, the English-language 
press, which has widespread appeal to the expanding middle 
class, has a wide multicity circulation throughout India. 

There are four major publishing groups in India, each of 
which controls national and regional English-language and ver- 
nacular publications. They are the Times of India Group, the 
Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, and the 
Anandabazar Patrika Group. The Times oflndiais India's largest 
English-language daily, with a circulation of 656,000 published 
in six cities. The Indian Express, with a daily circulation of 
519,000, is published in seventeen cities. There also are seven 
other daily newspapers with circulations of between 134,000 
and 477,000, all in English and all competitive with one 
another. Indian-language newspapers also enjoy large circula- 
tions but usually on a statewide or citywide basis. For example, 
the Malayalam-language daily Malayala Manorama circulates 
673,000 copies in Kerala; the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran cir- 
culates widely in Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi, with 580,000 
copies per day; Punjab Kesari, also published in Hindi and avail- 
able throughout Punjab and New Delhi, has a daily circulation 
of 562,000; and the Anandabazar Patrika, published in Calcutta 
in Bengali, has a daily circulation of 435,000. There are also 
numerous smaller publications throughout the nation. The 
combined circulation of India's newspapers and periodicals is 
in the order of 60 million, published daily in more than ninety 
languages. 

India has more than forty domestic news agencies. The 
Express News Service, the Press Trust of India, and the United 
News of India are among the major news agencies. They are 
headquartered in Delhi, Bombay, and New Delhi, respectively, 
and employ foreign correspondents. 

Although freedom of the press in India is the legal norm— it 
is constitutionally guaranteed — the scope of this freedom has 
often been contested by the government. Rigid press censor- 
ship was imposed during the Emergency starting in 1975 but 
quickly retracted in 1977. The government has continued, 
however, to exercise more indirect controls. Government 
advertising accounts for as much as 50 percent of all advertise- 
ments in Indian newspapers, providing a monetary incentive to 
limit harsh criticism of the administration. Until 1992, when 



500 



Government and Politics 



government regulation of access to newsprint was liberalized, 
controls on the distribution of newsprint could also be used to 
reward favored publications and threaten those that fell into 
disfavor. In 1988, at a time when the Indian press was publish- 
ing investigative reports about corruption and abuse of power 
in government, Parliament passed a tough defamation bill that 
mandated prison sentences for offending journalists. Vocifer- 
ous protests from journalists and opposition party leaders ulti- 
mately forced the government to withdraw the bill. Since the 
late 1980s, the independence of India's press has been bol- 
stered by the liberalization of government economic policy and 
the increase of private-sector advertising provided by the 
growth of India's private sector and the spread of consumer- 
ism. 

Broadcast Media 

The national television (Doordarshan) and radio (All India 
Radio, or Akashwani) networks are state-owned and managed 
by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Their news 
reporting customarily presents the government's point of view. 
For example, coverage of the 1989 election campaign blatantly 
favored the government of Rajiv Gandhi, and autonomy of the 
electronic media became a political issue. V.R Singh's National 
Front government sponsored the Prasar Bharati (Indian 
Broadcasting) Act, which Parliament considered in 1990, to 
provide greater autonomy to Doordarshan and All India Radio. 
The changes that resulted were limited. The bill provided for 
the establishment of an autonomous corporation to run Door- 
darshan and All India Radio. The corporation was to operate 
under a board of governors to be in charge of appointments 
and policy and a broadcasting council to respond to com- 
plaints. However, the legislation required that the corporation 
prepare and submit its budget within the framework of the cen- 
tral budget and stipulated that the personnel of the new broad- 
casting corporation be career civil servants to facilitate 
continued government control. In the early 1990s, increasing 
competition from television broadcasts transmitted via satellite 
appeared the most effective manner of limiting the progovern- 
ment bias of the government-controlled electronic media (see 
Telecommunications, ch. 6). 

Since the 1980s, India has experienced a rapid proliferation 
of television broadcasting that has helped shape popular cul- 
ture and the course of politics. Although the first television 



501 



India: A Country Study 

program was broadcast in 1959, the expansion of television did 
not begin in earnest until the extremely popular telecast of the 
Ninth Asian Games, which were held in New Delhi in 1982. 
Realizing the popular appeal and consequent influence of tele- 
vision broadcasting, the government undertook an expansion 
that by 1990 was planned to provide television access to 90 per- 
cent of the population. In 1993, about 169 million people were 
estimated to have watched Indian television each week, and, by 
1994, it was reported that there were some 47 million house- 
holds with televisions. There also is a growing selection of satel- 
lite transmission and cable services available (see Television, 
ch. 6). 

Television programming was initially kept tightly under the 
control of the government, which embarked on a self-con- 
scious effort to construct and propagate a cultural idea of the 
Indian nation. This goal is especially clear in the broadcasts of 
such megaseries as the Hindu epics Ramayana and Maha- 
bharata. In addition to the effort at nation-building, the politi- 
cians of India's ruling party have not hesitated to use television 
to build political support. In fact, the political abuse of Indian 
television led to demands to increase the autonomy of Door- 
darshan; these demands ultimately resulted in support for the 
Prasar Bharati Act. 

The 1990s have brought a radical transformation of televi- 
sion in India. Transnational satellite broadcasting made its 
debut in January 1991, when owners of satellite dishes — ini- 
tially mostly at major hotels — began receiving Cable News Net- 
work (CNN) coverage of the Persian Gulf War. Three months 
later, Star TV began broadcasting via satellite. Its fare initially 
included serials such as "The Bold and the Beautiful" and MTV 
programs. Satellite broadcasting spread rapidly through India's 
cities as local entrepreneurs erected dishes to receive signals 
and transmitted them through local cable systems. After its 
October 1992 launch, Zee TV offered stiff competition to Star 
TV. However, the future of Star TV was bolstered by billionaire 
Rupert Murdock, who acquired the network for US$525 mil- 
lion in July 1993. CNN International, part of the Turner Broad- 
casting System, was slated to start broadcasting entertainment 
programs, including top Hollywood films, in 1995. 

Competition from the satellite stations brought radical 
change to Doordarshan by cutting its audience and threaten- 
ing its advertising revenues at a time when the government was 
pressuring it to pay for expenditures from internal revenues. In 



502 



Government and Politics 



response, Doordarshan decided in 1993 to start five new chan- 
nels in addition to its original National Channel. Programming 
was radically transformed, and controversial news shows, soap 
operas, and coverage of high-fashion events proliferated. Of 
the new Doordarshan channels, however, only the Metro Chan- 
nel, which carries MTV music videos and other popular shows, 
has survived in the face of the new trend for talk programs that 
engage in a potpourri of racy topics. 

The Rise of Civil Society 

Political participation in India has been transformed in 
many ways since the 1960s. New social groups have entered the 
political arena and begun to use their political resources to 
shape the political process. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled 
Tribes, previously excluded from politics because of their posi- 
tion at the bottom of India's social hierarchy, have begun to 
take full advantage of the opportunities presented by India's 
democracy. Women and environmentalists constitute new polit- 
ical categories that transcend traditional distinctions. The 
spread of social movements and voluntary organizations has 
shown that despite the difficulties of India's political parties 
and state institutions, India's democratic tendency continues to 
thrive. 

An important aspect of the rise of civil society is the prolifer- 
ation of voluntary or nongovernmental organizations. Esti- 
mates of their number ranged from 50,000 to 100,000 in 1993. 
To some extent, the rise of voluntary organizations has been 
sponsored by the Indian state. For instance, the central govern- 
ment's Seventh Five-Year Plan of fiscal years (FY — see Glossary) 
1985-89 recognized the contributions of voluntary organiza- 
tions in accelerating development and substantially increased 
their funding. A 1987 survey of 1,273 voluntary agencies 
reported that 47 percent received some form of funding from 
the central government. Voluntary organizations also have 
thrived on foreign donations, which in 1991-92 contributed 
more than US$400 million to some 15,000 organizations. Some 
nongovernmental organizations cooperate with the central 
government in a manner that augments its capacity to imple- 
ment public policy, such as poverty alleviation, for example, in 
a decentralized manner. Other nongovernmental organiza- 
tions also serve as watchdogs, attempting to pressure govern- 
ment agencies to uphold the spirit of the state's laws and 
implement policies in accord with their stated objectives. Non- 



503 



India: A Country Study 



governmental organizations also endeavor to raise the political 
consciousness of various social groups, encouraging them to 
demand their rights and challenge social inequities. Finally, 
some social groups serve as innovators, experimenting with 
new approaches to solving social problems. 

Beginning in the 1970s, activists began to form broad-based 
social movements, which proved powerful advocates for inter- 
ests that they perceived as neglected by the state and political 
parties. Perhaps the most powerful has been the farmers' move- 
ment, which has organized hundreds of thousands of demon- 
strators in New Delhi and has pressured the government for 
higher prices on agricultural commodities and more invest- 
ment in rural areas. Members of Scheduled Castes led by the 
Dalit Panthers have moved to rearticulate the identity of 
former Untouchables. Women from an array of diverse organi- 
zations now interact in conferences and exchange ideas in 
order to define and promote women's issues. Simultaneously, 
an environmental movement has developed that has attempted 
to compel the government to be more responsive to environ- 
mental concerns and has attempted to redefine the concept of 
"development" to include respect for indigenous cultures and 
environmental sustainability. 

With its highly competitive elections, relatively independent 
judiciary, boisterous media, and thriving civil society, India con- 
tinues to possess one of the most democratic political systems 
of all developing countries. Nevertheless, Indian democracy is 
under stress. Political power within the Indian state has 
become increasingly centralized at a time when India's civil 
society has become mobilized along lines that reflect the coun- 
try's remarkable social diversity. The country's political parties, 
which might aggregate the country's diverse social interests in a 
way that would ensure the responsiveness of state authority, are 
in crisis. The Congress (I) has been in a state of decline, as 
reflected in the erosion of its traditional coalition of support 
and the implication of Congress (I) governments in a series of 
scandals. The party has failed to generate an enlightened lead- 
ership that might rejuvenate it and replace the increasingly dis- 
credited Nehruvian socialism with a novel programmatic 
appeal. The Congress (I)'s split in May 1995 added a new 
impediment to efforts to reinvigorate the party. 

The BJP, although it has a stronger party organization, in 
1995 had yet to find a way to transcend the limits of its militant 
Hindu nationalism and fashion a program that would appeal to 



504 



Government and Politics 

diverse social groups and enable it to build a majority coalition 
in India. The Janata Dal continued to suffer from lack of lead- 
ership, inadequate resources, and incessant factionalism. As its 
bases of power shrink, it stood in danger of being reduced to a 
party with only a few regional strongholds. As regional group- 
ings and members of the lower echelons of India's caste system 
become more assertive, regional and caste parties may play a 
more prominent role in India's political system. At this point, 
however, it is difficult to envision how they might stabilize 
India's political system. 

The unresponsiveness of India's political parties and govern- 
ment has encouraged the Indian public to mobilize through 
nongovernmental organizations and social movements. The 
consequent development of India's civil society has made Indi- 
ans less confident of the transformative power of the state and 
more confident of the power of the individual and local com- 
munity. This development is shifting a larger share of the initia- 
tive for resolving India's social problems from the state to 
society. Fashioning party and state institutions that will accom- 
modate the diverse interests that are now mobilized in Indian 
society is the major challenge confronting the Indian polity in 
the 1990s. 

* * * 

Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., and Stanley A. Kochanek's India: 
Government and Politics in a Developing Nation provides a thor- 
ough and insightful overview of Indian politics. The second 
edition of Paul R. Brass's The Politics of India since Independence is 
a useful account written by a scholar with detailed knowledge 
of India's grass roots. 

Atul Kohli's Democracy and Discontent is the definitive study of 
India's growing crisis of governability, with special emphasis on 
the decay of Indian political parties. State Against Democracy by 
Rajni Kothari, India's eminent political scientist, is a critique of 
the Indian state as well as a hopeful analysis of the rise of civil 
society. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph's In 
Pursuit of Lakshmi offers an illuminating account of the politics 
of India's development. Dominance and State Power in Modern 
India, edited by Francine R. Frankel and M.S.A. Rao, is a study 
of the changing relationship between caste and politics that 
describes the diversity of politics in India's states and docu- 
ments the rise of the Backward Classes. Paul R. Brass's Ethnicity 



505 



India: A Country Study 



and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison includes observations 
about the dynamics of ethnic politics in India. India Votes, 
edited by Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly, offers an 
account of India's elections in 1989 and 1991. David Butler, 
Ashok Lahiri, and Prannoy Roy's India Decides: Elections 1952- 
1991 includes copious data about election outcomes. 

India Today, India's leading weekly news magazine, offers 
excellent investigative journalism and news analysis. Economic 
and Political Weekly includes trenchant analyses of India's politi- 
cal economy. Asian Survey regularly publishes articles analyzing 
Indian politics. Seminar provides monthly symposia that gather 
analyses from leading Indian experts on problems confronting 
Indian society. The "clari.world.asia.india" electronic news- 
group provides releases from Reuters and the Associated Press 
that are an excellent way to keep up with current events. (For 
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



506 



Chapter 9. Foreign Relations 



Depiction of a boat from a coastal area of South India 



INDIA'S FOREIGN RELATIONS reflect a traditional policy of 
nonalignment (see Glossary), the exigencies of domestic eco- 
nomic reform and development, and the changing post-Cold 
War international environment. India's relations with the 
world have evolved considerably since the British colonial 
period (1757-1947), when a foreign power monopolized exter- 
nal relations and defense relations. On independence in 1947, 
few Indians had experience in making or conducting foreign 
policy. However, the country's oldest political party, the Indian 
National Congress (the Congress — see Glossary), had estab- 
lished a small foreign department in 1925 to make overseas 
contacts and to publicize its freedom struggle. From the late 
1920s on, Jawaharlal Nehru, who had the most long-standing 
interest in world affairs among independence leaders, formu- 
lated the Congress stance on international issues. As a member 
of the interim government in 1946, Nehru articulated India's 
approach to the world. 

During Nehru's tenure as prime minister (1947-64), he 
achieved a domestic consensus on the definition of Indian 
national interests and foreign policy goals — building a unified 
and integrated nation-state based on secular, democratic prin- 
ciples; defending Indian territory and protecting its security 
interests; guaranteeing India's independence internationally 
through nonalignment; and promoting national economic 
development unencumbered by overreliance on any country 
or group of countries. These objectives were closely related to 
the determinants of India's foreign relations: the historical leg- 
acy of South Asia; India's geopolitical position and security 
requirements; and India's economic needs as a large develop- 
ing nation. From 1947 until the late 1980s, New Delhi's foreign 
policy goals enabled it to achieve some successes in carving out 
an independent international role. Regionally, India was the 
predominant power because of its size, its population (the 
world's second-largest after China), and its growing military 
strength. However, relations with its neighbors, Pakistan in par- 
ticular, were often tense and fraught with conflict. In addition, 
globally India's nonaligned stance was not a viable substitute 
for the political and economic role it wished to play. 

India's international influence varied over the years after 
independence. Indian prestige and moral authority were high 



509 



India: A Country Study 

in the 1950s and facilitated the acquisition of developmental 
assistance from both East and West. Although the prestige 
stemmed from India's nonaligned stance, the nation was 
unable to prevent Cold War politics from becoming inter- 
twined with interstate relations in South Asia. In the 1960s and 
1970s, New Delhi's international position among developed 
and developing countries faded in the course of wars with 
China and Pakistan, disputes with other countries in South 
Asia, and India's attempt to balance Pakistan's support from 
the United States and China by signing the Treaty of Peace, 
Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet Union in August 
1971. Although India obtained substantial Soviet military and 
economic aid, which helped to strengthen the nation, India's 
influence was undercut regionally and internationally by the 
perception that its friendship with the Soviet Union prevented 
a more forthright condemnation of the Soviet presence in 
Afghanistan. In the 1980s, New Delhi improved relations with 
the United States, other developed countries, and China while 
continuing close ties with the Soviet Union. Relations with its 
South Asian neighbors, especially Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and 
Nepal, occupied much of the energies of the Ministry of Exter- 
nal Affairs. 

In the 1990s, India's economic problems and the demise of 
the bipolar world political system have forced New Delhi to 
reassess its foreign policy and to adjust its foreign relations. 
Previous policies proved inadequate to cope with the serious 
domestic and international problems facing India. The end of 
the Cold War gutted the core meaning of nonalignment and 
left Indian foreign policy without significant direction. The 
hard, pragmatic considerations of the early 1990s were still 
viewed within the nonaligned framework of the past, but the 
disintegration of the Soviet Union removed much of India's 
international leverage, for which relations with Russia and the 
other post-Soviet states could not compensate. 

Pragmatic security, economic considerations, and domestic 
political influences have reinforced New Delhi's reliance on 
the United States and other developed countries; caused New 
Delhi to abandon its anti-Israeli policy in the Middle East; and 
resulted in the courtship of the Central Asian republics and the 
newly industrializing economies of East and Southeast Asia. 
Although India shares the concerns of Russia, China, and 
many members of the Nonaligned Movement (see Glossary) 
about the preeminent position of the United States and other 



510 



Foreign Relations 



developed countries, different national interests and percep- 
tions make it improbable that India can turn cooperation with 
these countries to its advantage on most international issues. 
Furthermore, although Cold War politics have ceased to be a 
factor in South Asia, the most intractable problems in India's 
relations with Pakistan — conflict over Kashmir, support for sep- 
aratists, and nuclear and ballistic missile programs — still face 
the two countries. 

Foreign Policy Formulation 

Role of the Prime Minister 

Nehru set the pattern for the formation of Indian foreign 
policy: a strong personal role for the prime minister but a weak 
institutional structure. Nehru served concurrently as prime 
minister and minister of external affairs; he made all major for- 
eign policy decisions himself after consulting with his advisers 
and then entrusted the conduct of international affairs to 
senior members of the Indian Foreign Service. His successors 
continued to exercise considerable control over India's inter- 
national dealings, although they generally appointed separate 
ministers of external affairs. 

India's second prime minister, Lai Bahadur Shastri (1964- 
66), expanded the Office of Prime Minister (sometimes called 
the Prime Minister's Secretariat) and enlarged its powers (see 
The Executive, ch. 8). By the 1970s, the Office of the Prime 
Minister had become the de facto coordinator and supraminis- 
try of the Indian government. The enhanced role of the office 
strengthened the prime minister's control over foreign policy 
making at the expense of the Ministry of External Affairs. 
Advisers in the office provided channels of information and 
policy recommendations in addition to those offered by the 
Ministry of External Affairs. A subordinate part of the office — 
the Research and Analysis Wing — functioned in ways that sig- 
nificantly expanded the information available to the prime 
minister and his advisers. The Research and Analysis Wing 
gathered intelligence, provided intelligence analysis to the 
Office of the Prime Minister, and conducted covert operations 
abroad. 

The prime minister's control and reliance on personal advis- 
ers in the Office of the Prime Minister was particularly strong 
under the tenures of Indira Gandhi (1966-77 and 1980-84) 
and her son, Rajiv (1984-89), who succeeded her, and weaker 



511 



India: A Country Study 

during the periods of coalition governments under Morarji 
Desai (1977-79), Viswanath Pratap (V.P.) Singh (1989-90), 
Chandra Shekhar (1990-91), and P.V. Narasimha Rao (starting 
in June 1991). Although observers find it difficult to determine 
whether the locus of decision-making authority on any particu- 
lar issue lies with the Ministry of External Affairs, the Council 
of Ministers, the Office of the Prime Minister, or the prime 
minister himself, nevertheless in the 1990s India's prime minis- 
ters retain their dominance in the conduct of foreign relations. 

Ministry of External Affairs 

The Ministry of External Affairs is the governmental body 
most concerned with foreign affairs, with responsibility for 
some aspects of foreign policy making, actual implementation 
of policy, and daily conduct of international relations. The 
ministry's duties include providing timely information and 
analysis to the prime minister and minister of external affairs, 
recommending specific measures when necessary, planning 
policy for the future, and maintaining communications with 
foreign missions in New Delhi. In 1994 the ministry adminis- 
tered 149 diplomatic missions abroad, which were staffed 
largely by members of the Indian Foreign Service. The ministry 
is headed by the minister of external affairs, who holds cabinet 
rank and is assisted by a deputy minister and a foreign secre- 
tary, and secretaries of state from the Indian Foreign Service. 

In 1994 the total cadre strength of the Indian Foreign Ser- 
vice numbered 3,490, of which some 1,890 held posts abroad 
and 1,600 served at the Ministry of External Affairs headquar- 
ters in New Delhi. Members of the Indian Foreign Service are 
recruited through annual written and oral competitive exami- 
nations and come from a great variety of regional, economic, 
and social backgrounds. The Foreign Service Training Institute 
provides a wide range of courses for foreign service officers, 
including a basic professional course, a comprehensive course 
in diplomacy and international relations for foreign service 
recruits, a refresher course for commercial representatives, 
and foreign language training. 

The Ministry of External Affairs has thirteen territorial divi- 
sions, each covering a large area of the world, such as Eastern 
Europe and the post-Soviet states, or smaller areas on India's 
periphery, such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan. The minis- 
try also has functional divisions dealing with external publicity, 
protocol, consular affairs, Indians abroad, the United Nations 



512 



Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first 
prime minister 
Courtesy Biographic Collection, 
Library of Congress 




(UN) and other international organizations, and international 
conferences. Two of the eighteen specialized divisions and 
units of the ministry are of special note. The Policy Planning 
and Research Division conducts research and prepares briefs 
and background papers for top policy makers and ministry offi- 
cials. The briefs cover wide-ranging issues relating to India's 
foreign policy and role in the changing international environ- 
ment, and background papers provide information on issues 
concerning international developments. The Economic Divi- 
sion has the important task of handling foreign economic rela- 
tions. This division augments its activities to reflect changes in 
the government's economic policy and the international eco- 
nomic environment (see Liberalization in the Early 1990s, ch. 
6). In 1990 the division established the Economic Coordina- 
tion Unit to assess the impact on India of the Persian Gulf crisis 
arising from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, changes in Eastern 
Europe and the Soviet Union, and formation of a single mar- 
ket in the European Economic Community (after 1993 the 
European Union), as well as to promote foreign investment. 
The Economic Division also runs India's foreign aid programs, 
including the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation 
Programme, the Special Commonwealth African Assistance 
Programme, and aid to individual developing countries in 
South Asia and elsewhere. The ministry runs the Indian Coun- 



513 



India: A Country Study 

cil for Cultural Relations, which arranges exhibits, visits, and 
cultural exchanges with other countries and oversees the activi- 
ties of foreign cultural centers in India. 

The Ministry of External Affairs had a budget of Rs8.8 bil- 
lion (for value of the rupee — see Glossary) for fiscal year (FY — 
see Glossary) 1994. The largest single expense was the mainte- 
nance of missions abroad: Rs3.8 billion, or close to 44 percent 
of the ministry's expenditures. Foreign aid totaled Rsl.3 bil- 
lion, or 15.1 percent of the ministry's expenditures. The single 
largest recipient — as in most previous years — was Bhutan 
(Rs690 million), whose government operations and develop- 
ment are heavily subsidized by India. 

Other Government Organizations 

Besides the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of 
External Affairs, there are other government agencies that 
have foreign policy-making roles. In theory, the ministers of 
defence, commerce, and finance provide input to foreign pol- 
icy decisions discussed in cabinet meetings, but their influence 
in practical terms is overshadowed by the predominant posi- 
tion of the prime minister and his advisers. The armed forces 
are removed from policy making and have influence only 
through the minister of defence, to whom they are subordinate 
(see Organization and Equipment of the Armed Forces, ch. 
10). 

Only a limited role in foreign policy making is provided for 
India's bicameral Parliament (see The Legislature, ch. 8). 
Negotiated treaties and international agreements become 
legally binding on the state but are not part of domestic law 
unless passed by an act of Parliament, which also has no say in 
the appointment of diplomats and other government represen- 
tatives dealing with foreign affairs. For the most part, because 
of the widespread domestic support for India's foreign policy, 
Parliament has endorsed government actions or sought infor- 
mation. The most important official link between Parliament 
and the executive in the mid-1990s is the Committee on Exter- 
nal Affairs of the Lok Sabha (House of the People), the lower 
chamber of Parliament. The committee meets regularly and 
draws its membership from many parties. Usually it has served 
either as a forum for government briefings or as a deliberative 
body. 



514 



Foreign Relations 



The Role of Political and Interest Groups 

Institutional connections between public opinion and for- 
eign policy making are tenuous in the mid-1990s, as they have 
been since independence. Although international issues 
receive considerable attention in the media and in academic 
circles, the views expressed by journalists and scholars in these 
publications have little impact on foreign policy making. Inter- 
est groups concerned with foreign relations exist inside and 
outside Parliament but are less organized or articulate than in 
most other democracies. These organizations include such 
business groups as the Federation of Indian Chambers of Com- 
merce International; religious groups, especially among Mus- 
lims; and various friendship or cultural societies promoting 
closer ties with specific countries. Among the latter are infor- 
mal groups known as the "Russian" and "American" lobbies. 

Opposition political parties often have more effectively artic- 
ulated differing views regarding foreign policy, but even these 
views had little impact on policy making until the 1990s. Other 
than the Congress (I) — (I for Indira), only the communist par- 
ties, the Janata Party, and the Jana Sangh and one of its succes- 
sors, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP — Indian People's Party), 
developed coherent platforms on foreign policy (see Political 
Parties, ch. 8). After the mid-1950s, the communist parties 
were broadly supportive of Indian foreign policy. At the begin- 
ning of Janata Party rule (1977-79), Prime Minister Desai 
promised to return to "genuine nonalignment." However, secu- 
rity considerations forced Desai and his minister of external 
affairs, Jana Sangh stalwart Atal Behari Vajpayee, to adhere to 
the foreign policy path carved out by the Congress (I) — non- 
alignment with a pro-Soviet orientation. BJP foreign policy 
positions differed most strongly from those of the Congress (I). 
The BJP criticized nonalignment and advocated a more vigor- 
ous use of India's power to defend national interests from ero- 
sion at the hands of Pakistan and China. The BJP also favored 
the overt acquisition of nuclear weapons. By the early 1990s, 
the rising political fortunes of the BJP had an impact on the 
conduct of foreign policy, forcing the coalition government of 
V.P. Singh, which depended on BJP support, to take a hard line 
in the Kashmir crisis in 1990. Pressure from the Congress (I) 
also had an impact on India's response to the Persian Gulf cri- 
sis (see Middle East; Central Asia, this ch.). 



515 



India: A Country Study 



Determinants of Foreign Relations 

Historical Legacy 

During the British colonial period, India was a large political 
entity bordered by the buffer states of Afghanistan, Nepal, Sik- 
kim, Bhutan, and Tibet to the north and Ceylon (as Sri Lanka 
was then called) to the south. The withdrawal of the British and 
partition in 1947, which created India and Pakistan, resulted in 
geographical boundaries that cut across regional religious, 
social, ethnic, and linguistic groups, and disrupted economic 
and cultural ties. A slice of eastern India and the westernmost 
part of India became the East Wing and West Wing of Pakistan, 
respectively, and in 1971 the East Wing became Bangladesh. 

After independence India's leaders attempted to build a sec- 
ular state in which national identity would supersede regional, 
religious, or cultural identities. They regarded the movements 
for regional autonomy or independence in Punjab, Jammu and 
Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, and Assam as threats to Indian unity, par- 
ticularly because Indian leaders believed that their neigh- 
bors — Pakistan, later Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka — supported 
these movements. Furthermore, despite the commitment of 
Congress (I) leaders to the secular ideal, communal tensions 
and the rising influence of Hindu political parties pushed the 
Indian government increasingly to identify Indian greatness 
with Hinduism. The inability of Indian leaders to restrain anti- 
Muslim communal violence and the Kashmir policy of the 
Indian government resulted in continual tensions in relations 
with its Muslim neighbors. Thus, internal security and domes- 
tic political considerations, which stemmed from the perceived 
goals of building national identity and preserving national 
unity, permeated India's relations with its neighbors. 

Security Perceptions 

The British colonial rulers regarded most of South Asia as a 
strategic unit and endeavored to exclude external powers from 
the region (see The British Empire in India, ch. 1). In defend- 
ing this strategic unit, the British established a barrier of buffer 
states around India, attempting to cut off India from Russia 
and China, which could threaten from the north, and used 
naval power to protect India from the south. India's postinde- 
pendence leaders adapted this concept by defining a position 
in cultural as well as geographical terms. This view led them to 



516 



Foreign Relations 



view India as the region's preeminent power whose right to 
involve itself in its neighbor's affairs was justified in terms of 
the common ethnicity and common security needs of South 
Asia. 

This geostrategic perception affected India's foreign rela- 
tions in three ways. First, India endeavored, by treaty, alliance, 
or threats of force or economic embargo, to overturn any move 
by its neighbors that it deemed inimical to its own security 
interests. Of its neighbors, only Pakistan and China have been 
able to resist or thwart Indian actions. The Indian elite 
regarded their country as a regional peacekeeper whose moves 
were entirely defensive, rather than as a regional enforcer who 
imposed onerous conditions on its neighbors by virtue of its 
size and military might. Second, India viewed the intrusion of 
extraregional powers into South Asia as a threat to Indian secu- 
rity and to India's position as the predominant country in the 
region. India opposed any attempts by powers external to the 
region, whether by invitation of New Delhi's neighbors or not, 
to involve themselves or to establish a presence in the region. 
Therefore India was critical of Pakistan's alliance with China, 
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the United States naval 
presence on Diego Garcia in the central Indian Ocean and its 
military relations with Pakistan. India also resisted Moscow's 
entreaties to grant the Soviet navy base rights despite the 1971 
friendship treaty with the Soviet Union. 

India's program to build the military might necessary to 
defend its territory and security interests became intertwined 
in its foreign policy. New Delhi's defense buildup — particularly 
its covert nuclear weapons program and its drive to develop 
ballistic missiles — affected relations with Pakistan, China, and 
the United States. India's refusal to sign the 1968 Treaty on the 
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons stemmed as much from 
Pakistan's similar stance as from India's belief that the treaty 
discriminated against the development of peaceful nuclear 
technology by nonnuclear weapons states and failed to prevent 
the qualitative and quantitative vertical proliferation of nuclear 
weapons among the nations already possessing nuclear arms. 
In 1995, when 174 other nations approved an indefinite exten- 
sion of the treaty, India continued to refuse to sign, denounc- 
ing the treaty as "perpetuating nuclear discrimination." In 
addition, in the early 1990s India's sizable defense expendi- 
tures became an issue in New Delhi's attempts to secure assis- 



517 



India: A Country Study 



tance from developed countries and multilateral lending 
bodies (see Defense Spending, ch. 10). 

Nonalignment 

Nonalignment had its origins in India's colonial experience 
and the nonviolent independence struggle led by the Con- 
gress, which left India determined to be the master of its fate in 
an international system dominated politically by Cold War alli- 
ances and economically by Western capitalism. The principles 
of nonalignment, as articulated by Nehru and his successors, 
were preservation of India's freedom of action internationally 
through refusal to align India with any bloc or alliance, particu- 
larly those led by the United States or the Soviet Union; nonvi- 
olence and international cooperation as a means of settling 
international disputes; the Panch Shila (see Glossary), or the 
five principles of peaceful coexistence, as the basis for relations 
between states; opposition to colonialism and racism; and 
international cooperation to alleviate poverty and promote 
economic development (see Nehru's Legacy, ch. 1). Nonalign- 
ment was a consistent feature of Indian foreign policy by the 
late 1940s and enjoyed strong, almost unquestioning support 
among the Indian elite. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, Nehru's concept of nonalignment 
brought India considerable international prestige among 
newly independent states that shared India's concerns about 
the military confrontation between the superpowers and the 
influence of the former colonial powers. New Delhi used non- 
alignment to establish a significant role for itself as a leader of 
the Third World in such multilateral organizations as the 
United Nations (UN) and the Nonaligned Movement (see Par- 
ticipation in International Organizations, this ch.). The signing 
of the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation between 
India and the Soviet Union in 1971 and India's involvement in 
the internal affairs of its smaller neighbors in the 1970s and 
1980s tarnished New Delhi's image as a nonaligned nation and 
led some observers to note that in practice, nonalignment 
applied only to India's relations with countries outside South 
Asia. 

The early 1990s demise of the bipolar world system, which 
had existed since the end of World War II, shook the underpin- 
nings of India's foreign policy. The Cold War system of alli- 
ances had been rendered meaningless by the collapse of the 
East European communist states, the dissolution of the Warsaw 



518 



Foreign Relations 



Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), and the demise of the 
Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, most colonies had become 
independent, and apartheid in South Africa was being disman- 
tled, diminishing the value of anticolonialism and making it 
impossible for antiracism to serve as a rallying point for inter- 
national political action (India and South Africa restored full 
diplomatic relations in 1993 after a thirty-nine-year lapse). The 
Panch Shila, peaceful resolution of international disputes, and 
international cooperation to spur economic development — 
which was being enhanced by domestic economic reforms — 
were broad objectives in a changing world. Thus, the 1990s saw 
India redefining nonalignment and the view of India's place in 
the world. 

Overview of Foreign Relations 
South Asia 

Pakistan 

Relations with Pakistan have demanded a high proportion of 
India's international energies and undoubtedly will continue 
to do so. India and Pakistan have divergent national ideologies 
and have been unable to establish a mutually acceptable power 
equation in South Asia. The national ideologies of pluralism, 
democracy, and secularism for India and of Islam for Pakistan 
grew out of the preindependence struggle between the Con- 
gress and the All-India Muslim League (Muslim League — see 
Glossary), and in the early 1990s the line between domestic 
and foreign politics in India's relations with Pakistan remained 
blurred. Because great-power competition — between the 
United States and the Soviet Union and between the Soviet 
Union and China — became intertwined with the conflicts 
between India and Pakistan, India was unable to attain its goal 
of insulating South Asia from global rivalries. This superpower 
involvement enabled Pakistan to use external force in the face 
of India's superior endowments of population and resources. 

The most difficult problem in relations between India and 
Pakistan since partition in August 1947 has been their dispute 
over Kashmir. Pakistan's leaders did not accept the legality of 
the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to India, and unde- 
clared war broke out in October 1947 (see The Experience of 
Wars, ch. 10). It was the first of three conflicts between the two 
countries. Pakistan's representatives ever since have argued 



519 



India: A Country Study 

that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to exercise their 
right to self-determination through a plebiscite, as promised by 
Nehru and required by UN Security Council resolutions in 
1948 and 1949. The inconclusive fighting led to a UN-arranged 
cease-fire starting on January 1, 1949. On July 18, 1949, the two 
sides signed the Karachi Agreement establishing a cease-fire 
line that was to be supervised by the UN. The demarcation left 
Srinagar and almost 139,000 square kilometers under Indian 
control and 83,807 square kilometers under Pakistani control. 
Of these two areas, China occupied 37,555 square kilometers in 
India's Ladakh District (part of which is known as Aksai Chin) 
in 1962 and Pakistan ceded, in effect, 5,180 square kilometers 
in the Karakoram area to China when the two countries demar- 
cated their common border in 1961-65, leaving India with 
101,387 square kilometers and Pakistan with 78,387 square 
kilometers. Starting in January 1949, and still in place in 1995, 
the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan was 
tasked with supervising the cease-fire in Kashmir. The group 
comprises thirty-eight observers — from Belgium, Chile, Den- 
mark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Uruguay — who 
rotate their headquarters every six months between Srinagar 
(summer) and Rawalpindi, Pakistan (winter). 

In 1952 the elected and overwhelmingly Muslim Constituent 
Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir, led by the popular Sheikh 
Mohammed Abdullah, voted in favor of confirming accession 
to India. Thereafter, India regarded this vote as an adequate 
expression of popular will and demurred on holding a plebi- 
scite. After 1953 Jammu and Kashmir was identified as standing 
for the secular, pluralistic, and democratic principles of the 
Indian polity. Nehru refused to discuss the subject bilaterally 
until 1963, when India, under pressure from the United States 
and Britain, engaged in six rounds of secret talks with Pakistan 
on "Kashmir and other related issues." These negotiations 
failed, as did the 1964 attempt at mediation made by Abdullah, 
who recently had been released from a long detention by the 
Indian government because of his objections to Indian control. 

Armed infiltrators from Pakistan crossed the cease-fire line, 
and the number of skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani 
troops increased in the summer of 1965. Starting on August 5, 
1965, India alleged, Pakistani forces began to infiltrate the 
Indian-controlled portion of Jammu and Kashmir. India made 
a countermove in late August, and by September 1, 1965, the 
second conflict had fully erupted as Pakistan launched an 



520 



Foreign Relations 



attack across the international line of control in southwest 
Jammu and Kashmir. Indian forces retaliated on September 6 
in Pakistan's Punjab Province and prevailed over Pakistan's 
apparent superiority in tanks and aircraft. A cease-fire called by 
the UN Security Council on September 23 was observed by 
both sides. At Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in January 1966, the bel- 
ligerents agreed to restore the status quo ante and to resolve 
outstanding issues by negotiation. 

The third war between India and Pakistan, in December 

1971, centered in the east over the secession of East Pakistan 
(which became Bangladesh), but it also included engagements 
in Kashmir and elsewhere on the India-West Pakistan front. 
India's military victory was complete. The independence of 
Bangladesh was widely interpreted in India — but not in Paki- 
stan — as an ideological victory disproving the "Two Nations 
Theory" pushed by the Muslim League and that led to parti- 
tion in 1947. At Shimla (Simla), Himachal Pradesh, on July 2, 

1972, Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's President Zulfikar Ali 
Bhutto signed the Simla Accord by which India would return 
all personnel and captured territory in the west and the two 
countries would "settle their differences by peaceful means 
through bilateral negotiations." External bodies, including the 
UN, were excluded from the process. The fighting had resulted 
in the capture of each other's territory at various points along 
the cease-fire line, but the Simla Accord defined a new line of 
control that deviated in only minor ways from the 1949 cease- 
fire line. The two sides agreed not to alter the actual line of 
control unilaterally and promised to respect it "without preju- 
dice to the recognized position of either side." Both sides fur- 
ther undertook to "refrain from the threat or use of force in 
violation of the line." 

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Jammu and Kashmir 
prospered under a virtually autonomous government led first 
by Sheikh Abdullah and then by his son Farooq Abdullah. In 
the summer of 1984, differences between Srinagar and New 
Delhi led to the dismissal of Farooq's government by highly 
questionable means. Kashmir once again became an irritant in 
bilateral relations. Indian diplomats consistently accused Paki- 
stan of trying to "internationalize" the Kashmir dispute in viola- 
tion of the Simla Accord. 

In the mid- to late 1980s, the political situation in Kashmir 
became increasingly unstable. In March 1986, New Delhi 
invoked President's Rule to remove Farooq's successor, Ghulam 



521 



India: A Country Study 



Mohammed Shah, as chief minister, and replace his rule with 
that of Governor Jagmohan, who had been appointed by the 
central government in 1984. In state elections held in 1987, 
Farooq's political party, the National Conference, forged an 
alliance with Rajiv Gandhi's Congress (I), which won a majority 
in the state elections. Farooq's government failed to deal with 
Kashmir's economic problems and the endemic corruption of 
its public institutions, providing fertile ground for militant 
Kashmiris who demanded either independence or association 
with Pakistan. 

A rising spiral of unrest, demonstrations, armed attacks by 
Kashmiri separatists, and armed suppression by Indian security 
forces started in 1988 and was still occurring in the mid-1990s. 
New Delhi charged Islamabad (Pakistan's capital) with assisting 
insurgents in Jammu and Kashmir, and Prime Minister V.P. 
Singh warned that India should be psychologically prepared 
for war. In Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto stated that 
Pakistan was willing to fight a "thousand-year war" for control 
of Kashmir. Under pressure from the United States, the Soviet 
Union, and China to avoid a military conflict and solve their 
dispute under the terms of the Simla Accord, India and Paki- 
stan backed off in May 1990 and engaged in a series of talks on 
confidence-building measures for the rest of the year. Tensions 
reached new heights in the early and mid-1990s with increasing 
internal unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, charges of human 
rights abuses, and repeated clashes between Indian paramili- 
tary forces and Kashmiri militants, allegedly armed with Paki- 
stani-supplied weapons (see Political Issues, ch. 8; Insurgent 
Movements and External Subversion, ch. 10). 

A concurrent irritant related to the Kashmir dispute was the 
confrontation over the Siachen Glacier near the Karakoram 
Pass, which is located in northeast Jammu and Kashmir. In 
1984, Indian officials, citing Pakistan's "cartographic aggres- 
sion" extending the line of control northeast toward the Kara- 
koram Pass, contended that Pakistan intended to occupy the 
Siachen Glacier in order to stage an attack into Indian-con- 
trolled Kashmir. After New Delhi airlifted troops into the west- 
ern parts of the Saltoro Mountains, Islamabad deployed troops 
opposite them. Both sides maintained 5,000 troops in tempera- 
tures averaging -40°C. The estimated cost for India was about 
10 percent of the annual defense budget for FY 1992. After sev- 
eral skirmishes between the opposing troops, negotiations to 
resolve this confrontation began with five rounds of talks 



522 



Foreign Relations 



between 1986 and 1989. After a three-year hiatus because of 
tensions caused by the other Kashmir conflict, a sixth round of 
talks was held in November 1992. Some progress was made on 
the details of an agreement. In March 1994, Indian diplomats 
garnered enough support at the UN Human Rights Commis- 
sion to force Pakistan to withdraw a resolution charging India 
with human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. The two 
sides were encouraged to resolve their dispute through bilat- 
eral talks. 

After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 
1979 and Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she quickly 
dispatched a special emissary to assure Pakistani president 
General Mohammad Zia ul Haq that he could remove as many 
divisions as he wished from the Indian border without fear of 
any advantage being taken by India and suggested talks on 
reduction of force levels. Indian officials worked hard to pre- 
vent Zia from using the Afghan crisis as an opportunity to alter 
the regional balance of power by acquiring advanced weapons 
from the United States. In addition, Indira Gandhi attempted 
to avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union, democratic elements 
in Pakistan, and the substantial anti-Pakistan lobby within 
India. These largely secret efforts culminated in the visit of 
Minister of External Affairs PV. Narasimha Rao to Pakistan in 
June 1981, during which time he declared publicly that India 
was "unequivocally committed to respect Pakistan's national 
unity, territorial integrity, and sovereign equality" as well as its 
right to obtain arms for self-defense. 

Despite the setback suffered when the United States and 
Pakistan announced a new security and military assistance pro- 
gram, regular meetings took place between high Indian and 
Pakistani officials. These meetings were institutionalized in late 
1982 in the Indo-Pakistan Joint Commission, which included 
subcommissions for trade, economics, information, and travel. 
Indira Gandhi also received Zia on November 1, 1982, in New 
Delhi, and during their meeting they authorized their foreign 
ministers and foreign secretaries to proceed with talks leading 
to the establishment of the South Asian Association for 
Regional Cooperation (SAARC — see Glossary). 

In the mid- and late 1980s, India-Pakistan relations settled 
into a pattern of ups and downs. Despite the signing of an eco- 
nomic and trade agreement, little progress was made in con- 
cluding a comprehensive, long-term economic agreement to 
have nondiscriminatory bilateral trade. In addition, New Delhi 



523 



India: A Country Study 

charged Islamabad with arming and training Sikh terrorists in 
Punjab. The government's 1984 White Paper on the Punjab Agita- 
tion stated that India's strength, unity, and secularism were tar- 
gets of attack. The December 1985 visit of Zia to India, during 
which both sides agreed not to attack each other's nuclear facil- 
ities, ushered in a brief phase of cordiality, in which another 
agreement expanding trade was signed. The cordiality evapo- 
rated in early 1986, with further Indian unhappiness over Paki- 
stan's alleged interference in Punjab and the bungled Pakistani 
handling of the terrorist seizure of a Pan American airliner in 
which many Indians died. For its part, Pakistan was disturbed 
by anti-Muslim riots in India, and Zia accused India of assisting 
the political campaign of Benazir Bhutto. 

Between November 1986 and February 1987, first India, 
then Pakistan, conducted provocative military maneuvers 
along their border that raised tensions considerably. India's 
"Operation Brass Tacks" took place in Rajasthan, across from 
Pakistan's troubled Sindh Province, and Pakistan's maneuvers 
were located close to India's state of Punjab. The crisis atmo- 
sphere was heightened when Pakistan's premier nuclear scien- 
tist Abdul Qadir Khan revealed in a March 1987 interview that 
Pakistan had manufactured a nuclear bomb. Although Khan 
later retracted his statement, India stated that the disclosure 
was "forcing us to review our option." The tensions created by 
the military exercises and the nuclear issue were defused fol- 
lowing talks at the foreign secretary level in New Delhi (Janu- 
ary 31-February 4) and Islamabad (February 27-March 2), 
during which the two sides agreed to a phased troop with- 
drawal to peacetime positions. 

The sudden death of Zia in an air crash in August 1988 and 
the assumption of the prime ministership by Benazir Bhutto in 
December 1988 after democratic elections provided the two 
countries with an unexpected opportunity to improve rela- 
tions. Rajiv Gandhi's attendance at the SAARC summit in 
Islamabad in December 1988 permitted the two prime minis- 
ters to establish a personal rapport and to sign three bilateral 
agreements, including one proscribing attacks on each other's 
nuclear facilities. Despite the personal sympathy between the 
two leaders and Bhutto's initial emphasis on the 1972 Simla 
Accord as the basis for warmer bilateral ties, domestic political 
pressures, particularly relating to unrest in Sindh, Punjab, and 
Kashmir effectively destroyed the chances for improved rela- 
tions in 1989 and 1990. For her part, Bhutto backed away from 



524 




her comments on the Simla Accord by continuing to press the 
Kashmir issue internationally, and Indian public opinion 
forced Rajiv Gandhi and his successor, V.P. Singh, to take a 
hard line on events relating to Kashmir. 

In the early 1990s, Indian-Pakistani relations remained trou- 
bled despite bilateral efforts and changes in the international 
environment. High-level dialogue on a range of bilateral issues 
took place between foreign ministers and prime ministers at 
the UN and at other international meetings. However, discus- 
sions over confidence-building measures, begun in the summer 
of 1990 as a response to the Kashmir confrontation, were can- 
celed in June 1992 following mutual expulsions of diplomats 
for alleged espionage activities. In June 1991, Pakistani prime 
minister Mian Nawaz Sharif proposed talks by India, Pakistan, 
the United States, the Soviet Union, and China to consider 
making South Asia a nuclear-free zone, but the minority gov- 
ernments of Chandra Shekhar and subsequently that of 
Narasimha Rao declined to participate. Nevertheless, negotia- 
tions concerning the Siachen Glacier resumed in November 
1992 after a hiatus of three years. By the mid-1990s, little had 
occurred to improve bilateral relations as unrest in Jammu and 
Kashmir accelerated and domestic politics in both nations were 
unsettled. 



525 



India: A Country Study 



Bangladesh 

Although India played a major role in the establishment of 
an independent Bangladesh on April 17. 1971. New Delhi's 
relations with Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, were neither 
close nor free from dispute (see The Rise of Indira Gandhi, ch. 
1). In 1975 Bangladesh began to move awav from the linguistic 
nadonalism that had marked its liberation struggle and linked 
it to India's West Bengal state. Instead. Dhaka stressed Islam as 
the binding force in Bangladeshi nationalism. The new empha- 
sis on Islam., combined with Bangladeshi concern over India's 
military buildup and bilateral disputes over riparian borders, 
shared water resources,, and illegal immigration of Bang- 
ladeshis into West Bengal, made for fluctuations in India-Ban- 
gladesh relations. 

Relations are generally orood. nevertheless: the two countries 
have maintained a dialogue on a variety of issues and initiated a 
modest program of joint economic cooperation. In 1977 New 
Delhi and Dhaka signed an agreement — that is renewed annu- 
ally — on sharing the waters of the Ganga (Ganges) River dur- 
ing the drv season, but the two sides made little progress in 
achieving a permanent solution to their other problems. The 
main item of contention is the Farakka Barrage, where the 
Gan^a divides into two branches and India has built a feeder 
canal that controls the flow by rechanneling water on the 
Indian side of the river. The two nations were still at odds, 
despite high-level talks, in the mid-1990s. 

In the mid- and late 1980s. India's plan to erect a fence to 
prevent cross-border migration from Bangladesh and Ban- 
gladesh's desire that Chakma insurgents not receive Indian 
covert assistance and refuge in India were major irritants in 
bilateral relations. As agreed eighteen years earlier, in June 
1992 India granted a perpetual lease to Bangladesh for the nar- 
row. 1.5-hectare Tin Bigha corridor in the Ganga's delta that 
had long separated an enclave of Bangladeshis from their 
homeland. The two countries signed new agreements to 
enhance economic cooperation. Bangladesh also received 
Indian developmental assistance, but that aid was minor com- 
pared with the amounts India granted to Nepal,. Bhutan. Sri 
Lanka, and Maldives. The year 1991 also witnessed the first- 
ever visit of an Indian armv chief of staff to Dhaka. 

Sri Lanka 

The two major factors influencing India's relations with Sri 



526 



Foreign Relations 



Lanka have been security and the shared ethnicity of Tamils liv- 
ing in southern India and in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. 
Before 1980 common security perceptions and New Delhi's 
reluctance to intervene in internal affairs in Sri Lanka's capital 
of Colombo made for relatively close ties between the two 
countries' governments. Beginning in the mid-1950s, and coin- 
ciding with the withdrawal of Britain's military presence in the 
Indian Ocean, India and Sri Lanka increasingly came to share 
regional security interests. In the 1970s, New Delhi and 
Colombo enjoyed close ties on the strength of the relationship 
between Indira Gandhi and Sri Lanka's prime minister, Mrs. 
Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias (S.R.D.) Bandaranaike. India fully 
approved Sri Lanka's desire to replace the British security 
umbrella with an Indian one, and both sides pursued a policy 
of nonalignment and cooperated to minimize Western influ- 
ence in the Indian Ocean. 

In the 1980s, ethnic conflict between Sri Lankan Sinhalese 
in the south and Sri Lankan Tamils in the north escalated, and 
Tamil separatists established bases and received funding, weap- 
ons, and, reportedly, training in India. The clandestine assis- 
tance came from private sources and, according to some 
observers, the state government of Tamil Nadu, and was toler- 
ated by the central government until 1987. Anti-Tamil violence 
in Colombo in July 1983 prompted India to intervene in the 
Tamil-Sinhalese conflict, but mediatory efforts failed to pre- 
vent the deterioration of the situation. In May 1987, after the 
Sri Lankan government attempted to regain control of the 
Jaffna region, in the extreme northern area of the island, by 
means of an economic blockade and military action, India sup- 
plied food and medicine by air and sea to the region. On July 
29, 1987, Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan 
president Junius Richard (J.R.) Jayawardene signed an accord 
designed to settle the conflict by sending the Indian Peace 
Keeping Force (IPKF) to establish order and disarm Tamil sep- 
aratists, to establish new administrative bodies and hold elec- 
tions to accommodate Tamil demands for autonomy, and to 
repatriate Tamil refugees in India and Sri Lanka. The accord 
also forbade the military use of Sri Lankan ports or broadcast- 
ing facilities by outside powers. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil 
Eelam (LTTE), the most militant separatist group, refused to 
disarm, and Indian troops sustained heavy casualties while fail- 
ing to destroy the LTTE. In June 1989, newly elected Sri Lan- 
kan president Ranasinghe Premadasa demanded the 



527 



India: A Country Study 

withdrawal of the IPKF. Despite the tensions between the two 
countries created by this request, New Delhi completed the 
withdrawal in March 1990 (see Peacekeeping Operations, ch. 
10). 

Bilateral relations improved somewhat in the early 1990s, as 
the government attempted to expand economic, scientific, and 
cultural cooperation. India continued to take an interest in the 
status of Sri Lankan Tamils, but without the direct intervention 
that characterized the 1980s. The May 1991 assassination of 
Rajiv Gandhi, allegedly by the LTTE, forced New Delhi to crack 
down on the LTTE presence in Tamil Nadu and to institute 
naval patrols in the Palk Strait to interdict LTTE movements to 
India. In January 1992, repatriation of Tamil refugees to Sri 
Lanka commenced and was still underway in 1994. 

Nepal 

Relations between India and Nepal are close yet fraught with 
difficulties stemming from geography, economics, the prob- 
lems inherent in big power-small power relations, and common 
ethnic and linguistic identities that overlap the two countries' 
borders. In 1950 New Delhi and Kathmandu initiated their 
intertwined relationship with the Treaty of Peace and Friend- 
ship and accompanying letters that defined security relations 
between the two countries, and an agreement governing both 
bilateral trade and trade transiting Indian soil. The 1950 treaty 
and letters stated that "neither government shall tolerate any 
threat to the security of the other by a foreign aggressor" and 
obligated both sides "to inform each other of any serious fric- 
tion or misunderstanding with any neighboring state likely to 
cause any breach in the friendly relations subsisting between 
the two governments." These accords cemented a "special rela- 
tionship" between India and Nepal that granted Nepal prefer- 
ential economic treatment and provided Nepalese in India the 
same economic and educational opportunities as Indian citi- 
zens. 

In the 1950s, Nepal welcomed close relations with India, but 
as the number of Nepalese living and working in India 
increased and the involvement of India in Nepal's economy 
deepened in the 1960s and after, so too did Nepalese discom- 
fort with the special relationship. Tensions came to a head in 
the mid-1970s, when Nepal pressed for substantial amend- 
ments in its favor in the trade and transit treaty and openly crit- 
icized India's 1975 annexation of Sikkim as an Indian state. In 



528 



Rajiv Gandhi, prime minister 
from 1984 to 1989 
Courtesy Embassy of India, 
Washington 



1975 King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev proposed that Nepal 
be recognized internationally as a zone of peace; he received 
support from China and Pakistan. In New Delhi's view, if the 
king's proposal did not contradict the 1950 treaty and was 
merely an extension of nonalignment, it was unnecessary; if it 
was a repudiation of the special relationship, it represented a 
possible threat to India's security and could not be endorsed. 
In 1984 Nepal repeated the proposal, but there was no reaction 
from India. Nepal continually promoted the proposal in inter- 
national forums, with Chinese support; by 1990 it had won the 
support of 112 countries. 

In 1978 India agreed to separate trade and transit treaties, 
satisfying a long-term Nepalese demand. In 1988, when the two 
treaties were up for renewal, Nepal's refusal to accommodate 
India's wishes on the transit treaty caused India to call for a sin- 
gle trade and transit treaty. Thereafter, Nepal took a hard-line 
position that led to a serious crisis in India-Nepal relations. 
After two extensions, the two treaties expired on March 23, 
1989, resulting in a virtual Indian economic blockade of Nepal 
that lasted until late April 1990. Although economic issues 
were a major factor in the two countries' confrontation, Indian 
dissatisfaction with Nepal's 1988 acquisition of Chinese weap- 
onry played an important role. New Delhi perceived the arms 
purchase as an indication of Kathmandu's intent to build a mil- 



529 



India: A Country Study 



itary relationship with Beijing, in violation of the 1950 treaty 
and letters exchanged in 1959 and 1965, which included Nepal 
in India's security zone and precluded arms purchases without 
India's approval. India linked security with economic relations 
and insisted on reviewing India-Nepal relations as a whole. 
Nepal had to back down after worsening economic conditions 
led to a change in Nepal's political system, in which the king 
was forced to institute a parliamentary democracy. The new 
government sought quick restoration of amicable relations 
with India. 

The special security relationship between New Delhi and 
Kathmandu was reestablished during the June 1990 New Delhi 
meeting of Nepal's prime minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai 
and Indian prime minister V.P. Singh. During the December 
1991 visit to India by Nepalese prime minister Girijad Prasad 
Koirala, the two countries signed new, separate trade and tran- 
sit treaties and other economic agreements designed to accord 
Nepal additional economic benefits. 

Indian-Nepali relations appeared to be undergoing still 
more reassessment when Nepal's prime minister Man Mohan 
Adhikary visited New Delhi in April 1995 and insisted on a 
major review of the 1950 peace and friendship treaty. In the 
face of benign statements by his Indian hosts relating to the 
treaty, Adhikary sought greater economic independence for 
his landlocked nation while simultaneously striving to improve 
ties with China. 

Bhutan 

Despite the long and substantial involvement of India in 
Bhutan's economic, educational, and military affairs, and 
India's advisory role in foreign affairs embodied in the August 
8, 1949, Treaty of Friendship Between the Government of 
India and the Government of Bhutan, Thimphu's autonomy 
has been fully respected by New Delhi. Bhutan's geographic 
isolation, its distinctive Buddhist culture, and its deliberate 
restriction on the number and kind of foreigners admitted 
have helped to protect its separate identity. Furthermore, Bhu- 
tan's relationship with China, unlike Nepal's, has not become 
an issue in relations with India. Bhutanese subjects have the 
same access to economic and educational opportunities as 
Indian citizens, and Indian citizens have the right to carry on 
trade in Bhutan, with some restrictions that protect Bhutanese 
industries. India also provides Bhutan with developmental 



530 



Foreign Relations 



assistance and cooperation in infrastructure, telecommunica- 
tions, industry, energy, medicine, and animal husbandry. Since 
joining the UN in 1971, Bhutan has increasingly established its 
international status in a concerted effort to avoid the fate of 
Sikkim's absorption into India following the reduction of Sik- 
kim's indigenous people to minority status. 

Maldives 

India and Maldives have enjoyed close and friendly relations 
since Maldives became independent in 1965. Disputes between 
the two countries have been few, and both sides amicably set- 
tled their maritime boundary in 1976. In November 1988, at 
the behest of the Maldivian government, Indian paratroopers 
and naval forces crushed a coup attempt by mercenaries. 
India's action, viewed by some critics as an indication of Indian 
ambitions to be a regional police officer, were regarded by the 
United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, Nepal, and Ban- 
gladesh as legitimate assistance to a friendly government and 
in keeping with India's strategic role in South Asia. In the 1980s 
and 1990s, Indian and Maldivian leaders maintained regular 
consultations at the highest levels. New Delhi also has provided 
developmental assistance to Male (Maldives' capital) and has 
participated in bilateral cooperation programs in infrastruc- 
ture development, health and welfare, civil aviation, telecom- 
munications, and labor resources development. 

China 

Although India and China had relatively little political con- 
tact before the 1950s, both countries have had extensive cul- 
tural contact since the first century A.D., especially with the 
transmission of Buddhism from India to China (see Buddhism, 
ch. 3). Although Nehru based his vision of "resurgent Asia" on 
friendship between the two largest states of Asia, the two coun- 
tries had a conflict of interest in Tibet (which later became 
China's Xizang Autonomous Region), a geographical and 
political buffer zone where India had inherited special privi- 
leges from the British colonial government. At the end of its 
civil war in 1949, China wanted to reassert control over Tibet 
and to "liberate" the Tibetan people from Lamaism (Tibetan 
Buddhism) and feudalism, which it did by force of arms in 
1950. To avoid antagonizing China, Nehru informed Chinese 
leaders that India had neither political nor territorial ambi- 
tions, nor did it seek special privileges in Tibet, but that tradi- 



531 



India: A Country Study 

tional trading rights must continue. With Indian support, 
Tibetan delegates signed an agreement in May 1951 recogniz- 
ing Chinese sovereignty and control but guaranteeing that the 
existing political and social system in Tibet would continue. 
Direct negotiations between India and China commenced in 
an atmosphere improved by India's mediatory efforts in end- 
ing the Korean War (1950-53). 

In April 1954, India and China signed an eight-year agree- 
ment on Tibet that set forth the basis of their relationship in 
the form of the Panch Shila. Although critics called the Panch 
Shila naive, Nehru calculated that in the absence of either the 
wherewithal or a policy for defense of the Himalayan region, 
India's best guarantee of security was to establish a psychologi- 
cal buffer zone in place of the lost physical buffer of Tibet. 
Thus the catch phrase of India's diplomacy with China in the 
1950s was Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai (Hindi for "India and China are 
brothers"). Up to 1959, despite border skirmishes and discrep- 
ancies between Indian and Chinese maps, Chinese leaders ami- 
cably had assured India that there was no territorial contro- 
versy on the border. 

When an Indian reconnaissance party discovered a com- 
pleted Chinese road running through the Aksai Chin region of 
the Ladakh District of Jammu and Kashmir, border clashes and 
Indian protests became more frequent and serious. In January 
1959, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai wrote to Nehru, rejecting 
Nehru's contention that the border was based on treaty and 
custom and pointing out that no government in China had 
accepted as legal the McMahon Line, which in the 1914 Simla 
Convention defined the eastern section of the border between 
India and Tibet. The Dalai Lama — spiritual and temporal head 
of the Tibetan people — sought sanctuary in Dharmsala, Hima- 
chal Pradesh, in March 1959, and thousands of Tibetan refu- 
gees settled in northwestern India, particularly in Himachal 
Pradesh. China accused India of expansionism and imperial- 
ism in Tibet and throughout the Himalayan region. China 
claimed 104,000 square kilometers of territory over which 
India's maps showed clear sovereignty, and demanded "rectifi- 
cation" of the entire border. 

Zhou proposed that China relinquish its claim to most of 
India's northeast in exchange for India's abandonment of its 
claim to Aksai Chin. The Indian government, constrained by 
domestic public opinion, rejected the idea of a settlement 



532 



Foreign Relations 



based on uncompensated loss of territory as being humiliating 
and unequal. 

Chinese forces attacked India on October 20, 1962. Having 
pushed the unprepared, ill-equipped, and inadequately led 
Indian forces to within forty-eight kilometers of the Assam 
plains in the northeast and having occupied strategic points in 
Ladakh, China declared a unilateral cease-fire on November 21 
and withdrew twenty kilometers behind its new line of control 
(see The Experience of Wars, ch. 10). 

Relations with China worsened during the rest of the 1960s 
and the early 1970s as Chinese-Pakistani relations improved 
and Chinese-Soviet relations worsened. China backed Pakistan 
in its 1965 war with India. Between 1967 and 1971, an all- 
weather road was built across territory claimed by India, link- 
ing China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with Pakistan; 
India could do no more than protest. China continued an 
active propaganda campaign against India and supplied ideo- 
logical, financial, and other assistance to dissident groups, 
especially to tribes in northeastern India. China accused India 
of assisting the Khampa rebels in Tibet. Diplomatic contact 
between the two governments was minimal although not for- 
mally severed. The flow of cultural and other exchanges that 
had marked the 1950s ceased entirely. In August 1971, India 
signed its Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with 
the Soviet Union, and the United States and China sided with 
Pakistan in its December 1971 war with India. By this time, 
Beijing was seated at the UN, where its representatives 
denounced India as being a "tool of Soviet expansionism." 

India and China renewed efforts to improve relations after 
the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. 
China modified its pro-Pakistan stand on Kashmir and 
appeared willing to remain silent on India's absorption of Sik- 
kim and its special advisory relationship with Bhutan. China's 
leaders agreed to discuss the boundary issue — India's prior- 
ity — as the first step to a broadening of relations. The two coun- 
tries hosted each others' news agencies, and Kailash 
(Kangrinboge Feng) and Mansarowar Lake (Mapam Yumco 
Lake) in Tibet — the mythological home of the Hindu pan- 
theon — were opened to annual pilgrimages from India. In 
1981 Chinese minister of foreign affairs Huang Hua was invited 
to India, where he made complimentary remarks about India's 
role in South Asia. Chinese premier Zhao Ziyang concurrently 
toured Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. 



533 



India: A Country Study 



After the Huang visit,. India and China held eight rounds of 
border negotiations between December 1981 and November 
19S7. These talks initiallv raised hopes that progress could be 
made on the border issue. However, in 1985 China stiffened its 
position on the border and insisted on mutual concessions 
without defining the exact terms of its "package proposal" or 
where the actual line of control lay. In 1986 and 1987. the 
negotiations achieved nothing, given the charges exchanged 
between the two countries of militarv encroachment in the 
Sumdorune Chu vallev of the Tawane tract on the eastern sec- 
tor of the border. China's construction of a militarv post and 
helicopter pad in the area in 1986 and India's grant of state- 
hood to Arunachal Pradesh (formerly the North-East Frontier 
Agencv) in February 1987 caused both sides to deplov new 
troops to the area, raising tensions and fears of a new border 
war. China relayed warnings that it would "teach India a lesson" 
if it did not cease "nibbling" at Chinese territorv. By the sum- 
mer of 1987, however, both sides had backed away from con- 
flict and denied that militarv clashes had taken place. 

A warming trend in relations was facilitated bv Rajiv Gan- 
dhi's visit to China in December 1988. The two sides issued a 
joint communique that stressed the need to restore friendlv 
relations on the basis of the Panch Shila and noted the impor- 
tance of the first visit bv an Indian prime minister to China 
since Nehru's 1954 visit. India and China agreed to broaden 
bilateral ties in various areas, working to achieve a "fair and rea- 
sonable settlement while seeking a mutually acceptable solu- 
tion' to the border dispute. The communique also expressed 
China's concern about agitation by Tibetan separatists in India 
and reiterated China's position that Tibet was an integral part 
of China and that anti-China political activities bv expatriate 
Tibetans was not to be tolerated. Rajiv Gandhi signed bilateral 
agreements on science and technology cooperation, on civil 
aviation to establish direct air links, and on cultural exchanges. 
The two sides also agreed to hold annual diplomatic consulta- 
tions between foreign ministers, and to set up a joint ministe- 
rial committee on economic and scientific cooperation and a 
joint working group on the boundarv issue. The latter group 
was to be led bv the Indian foreign secretary and the Chinese 
vice minister of foreign affairs. 

As the mid-1990s approached, slow but steadv improvement 
in relations with China was visible. Top-level dialogue contin- 
ued with the December 1991 visit of Chinese premier Li Peng 



534 



Foreign Relations 



to India and the May 1992 visit to China of Indian president 
Ramaswami Venkataraman. Six rounds of talks of the Indian- 
Chinese Joint Working Group on the Border Issue were held 
between December 1988 and June 1993. Progress was also 
made in reducing tensions on the border via confidence-build- 
ing measures, including mutual troop reductions, regular 
meetings of local military commanders, and advance notifica- 
tion of military exercises. Border trade resumed in July 1992 
after a hiatus of more than thirty years, consulates reopened in 
Bombay (or Mumbai in the Marathi language) and Shanghai 
in December 1992, and, in June 1993, the two sides agreed to 
open an additional border trading post. During Sharad Pawar's 
July 1992 visit to Beijing, the first ever by an Indian minister of 
defence, the two defense establishments agreed to develop aca- 
demic, military, scientific, and technological exchanges and to 
schedule an Indian port call by a Chinese naval vessel. 

Substantial movement in relations continued in 1993. The 
sixth- round joint working group talks were held in June in 
New Delhi but resulted in only minor developments. However, 
as the year progressed the long-standing border dispute was 
eased as a result of bilateral pledges to reduce troop levels and 
to respect the cease-fire line along the India-China border. 
Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Chinese premier Li Peng 
signed the border agreement and three other agreements (on 
cross-border trade, and on increased cooperation on the envi- 
ronment and in radio and television broadcasting) during the 
former's visit to Beijing in September. A senior-level Chinese 
military delegation made a six-day goodwill visit to India in 
December 1993 aimed at "fostering confidence-building mea- 
sures between the defense forces of the two countries." The 
visit, however, came at a time when press reports revealed that, 
as a result of improved relations between China and Burma, 
China was exporting greater amounts of military materiel to 
Burma's army, navy, and air force and sending an increasing 
number of technicians to Burma. Of concern to Indian secu- 
rity officials was the presence of Chinese radar technicians in 
Burma's Coco Islands, which border India's Union Territory of 
the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Nevertheless, movement 
continued in 1994 on troop reductions along the Himalayan 
frontier. Moreover, in January 1994 Beijing announced that it 
not only favored a negotiated solution on Kashmir, but also 
opposed any form of independence for the region. 



535 



India: A Country Study 

Talks were held in New Delhi in February 1994 aimed at con- 
firming established "confidence-building measures" and dis- 
cussing clarification of the "line of actual control," reduction of 
armed forces along the line, and prior information about 
forthcoming military exercises. China's hope for settlement of 
the boundary issue was reiterated. 

The 1993 Chinese military visit to India was reciprocated by 
Indian army chief of staff General B.C. Joshi. During talks in 
Beijing in July 1994, the two sides agreed that border problems 
should be resolved peacefully through "mutual understanding 
and concessions." The border issue was raised in September 
1994 when Chinese minister of national defense Chi Haotian 
visited New Delhi for extensive talks with high-level Indian 
trade and defense officials. Further talks in New Delhi in 
March 1995 by the India-China Expert Group led to an agree- 
ment to set up two additional points of contact along the 4,000- 
kilometer border to facilitate meetings between military per- 
sonnel. The two sides also were reported as "seriously engaged" 
in defining the McMahon Line and the line of actual control 
vis-a-vis military exercises and prevention of air intrusion. Talks 
in Beijing in July 1995 aimed at better border security and com- 
bating cross-border crimes and in New Delhi in August 1995 on 
additional troop withdrawals from the border made* further 
progress in reducing tensions. 

Possibly indicative of the further relaxation of India-China 
relations — at least there was little notice taken in Beijing — was 
the April 1995 announcement, after a year of consultation, of 
the opening of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in 
New Delhi. The center serves as the representative office of 
Taiwan and is the counterpart of the India-Taipei Association 
in Taiwan; both institutions have the goal of improving rela- 
tions between the two sides, which have been strained since 
New Delhi's recognition of Beijing in 1950. 

Southeast Asia 

In the 1970s and 1980s, India's close ties with the Soviet 
Union and its pro-Soviet, pro-Vietnamese policies toward Cam- 
bodia precluded development of any constructive relations 
between India on the one hand and the countries of the Associ- 
ation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN — see Glossary) on 
the other. Furthermore, India's military buildup, particularly 
of its naval capabilities and naval installations in the Andaman 
and Nicobar Islands, worried ASEAN policy makers, who saw 



536 



Foreign Relations 



India as a potential threat to regional security. Indian-ASEAN 
relations improved in the 1990s as the result of the end of the 
bipolar world system, the UN-brokered peace settlement in 
Cambodia, and the breakup of the Soviet Union. For its part, 
New Delhi sought to boost economic and trade ties with the 
region and to establish closer political and defense ties in order 
to counteract China's growing influence in Southeast Asia. 
ASEAN countries grew less concerned with India's regional 
ambitions after New Delhi's decision to curtail its naval buildup 
because of financial restraints. In January 1992, ASEAN 
accepted India's proposal to become a "sectoral dialogue part- 
ner" in the areas of trade, technical and labor development, 
technology, and tourism. India's new role was expected to facil- 
itate economic cooperation. In January 1993, India and Malay- 
sia signed a memorandum of understanding on defense 
cooperation. 

India has had close ties with Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam 
as a result of its 1954-73 chairmanship of the International 
Commissions of Control and Supervision established by the 
1954 Geneva Accords on Indochina. These relations were 
enhanced by India's friendship with the Soviet Union, particu- 
larly after 1971 and, in the case of Vietnam, shared perceptions 
of the threat from China. With regard to Cambodia, India rec- 
ognized the Vietnamese-installed regime in 1980 and worked 
to avert censure of the regime in the annual UN General 
Assembly and triennial Nonaligned Movement summit meet- 
ings. In the late 1980s, Indian diplomats attempted to facilitate 
the search for peace in Cambodia, and India participated in 
the 1989 Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia and in subse- 
quent efforts to find a solution to the Cambodian situation. 
New Delhi played a minor but nevertheless constructive role 
before and after the Agreement on a Comprehensive Political 
Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict and three other docu- 
ments were signed in Paris on October 23, 1991. India contrib- 
uted more than 1,700 civilian, military, and police personnel to 
the United Nations Advanced Mission in Cambodia and the 
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. 

Middle East 

India has traditionally pursued a pro-Arab policy regarding 
the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to counteract Pakistani influ- 
ence in the region and to secure access to Middle East petro- 
leum resources. In the 1950s and early 1960s, this pro-Arab 



537 



India: A Country Study 

stance did not help India in establishing good relations with all 
Arab countries but may have served to keep peace with its own 
Muslim minority. India concentrated on developing a close 
relationship with Egypt on the strength of Nehru's ties with 
Egyptian president Gamel Abdul Nasser. But the New Delhi- 
Cairo friendship was insufficient to counteract Arab sympathy 
for Pakistan in its dispute with India. Furthermore, Indian- 
Egyptian ties came at the expense of cultivating relations with 
such countries as Saudi Arabia and Jordan and thus limited 
India's influence in the region. 

In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, India successfully 
improved bilateral relations by developing mutually beneficial 
economic exchanges with a number of Islamic countries, par- 
ticularly Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the other Persian Gulf 
states. The strength of India's economic ties enabled it to build 
strong relationships with Iran and Iraq, which helped India 
weather the displeasure of Islamic countries stemming from 
India's war with Pakistan in 1971. Indian-Middle Eastern rela- 
tions were further strengthened by New Delhi's anti-Israeli 
stance in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 and by Indian 
support for the fourfold oil price rise in 1973 by the Organiza- 
tion of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Closer ties 
with Middle Eastern countries were dictated by India's depen- 
dency on petroleum imports. Oil represented 8 percent of 
India's total imports in 1971; 42 percent in 1981; and 28 per- 
cent in 1991. India purchased oil from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, 
the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait and, in return, provided 
engineering services, manufactured goods, and labor. The 
1980-88 Iran-Iraq War forced India to shift its oil purchases 
from Iran and Iraq to Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states. 
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states also have received large num- 
bers of Indian workers and manufactures and have become the 
regional base for Indian business operations. 

Two events in 1978 and 1979 — the installation of the Islamic 
regime under Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini in 
Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in support of the 
pro-Soviet Marxist regime in Kabul — complicated India's rela- 
tions with Middle East countries. From the Indian perspective, 
these two events and the Iran-Iraq War changed the balance of 
power in West Asia by weakening Iran as a regional power and 
a potential supporter of Pakistan, a situation favorable to India. 
At the same time, proxy superpower competition in Afghani- 
stan strengthened the hand of India's adversary Pakistan by vir- 



538 



Foreign Relations 



tue of the military support Pakistan received from the United 
States, China, and Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. In the 1980s, 
India performed a delicate diplomatic balancing act. New 
Delhi took a position of neutrality in the Iran-Iraq War, main- 
tained warm ties with Baghdad, and built workable political 
and economic relations with Tehran despite misgivings about 
the foreign policy goals of the Khomeini regime. India man- 
aged to improve relations with Middle Eastern countries that 
provided support to the Afghan mujahideen and Pakistan by 
redirecting Indian petroleum purchases to Saudi Arabia and 
the Persian Gulf countries. New Delhi, which traditionally had 
had close relations with Kabul, condemned the Soviet invasion 
only in the most perfunctory manner and provided diplomatic, 
economic, and logistic support for the Marxist regime. 

In the early 1990s, India stepped back from its staunch anti- 
Israeli stance and support for the Palestinian cause. Besides 
practical economic and security considerations in the post- 
Cold War world, domestic politics — especially those influenced 
by Hindu nationalists — played a role in this reversal. In Decem- 
ber 1991, India voted with the UN majority to repeal the UN 
resolution equating Zionism with racism. In 1992, following 
the example of the Soviet Union and China, India established 
diplomatic relations with Israel. 

During the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, Indian policy makers 
were torn between adopting a traditional nonaligned policy 
sympathetic to Iraq or favoring the coalition of moderate Arab 
and Western countries that could benefit Indian security and 
economic interests. India initially adopted an ambivalent 
approach, condemning both the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and 
the intrusion of external forces into the region. When the 
National Front government led by V.P. Singh was replaced by 
the Chandra Shekhar minority government in November 1990, 
the Indian response changed. Wary of incurring the displea- 
sure of the United States and other Western nations on whom 
India depended to obtain assistance from the International 
Monetary Fund (IMF — see Glossary), New Delhi voted for the 
UN resolution authorizing the use of force to expel Iraqi 
troops from Kuwait and rejected Iraq's linkage of the Kuwaiti 
and Palestinian problems. In January 1991, India also permit- 
ted United States military aircraft to refuel in Bombay. The 
refueling decision stirred such domestic controversy that the 
Chandra Shekhar government withdrew the refueling privi- 
leges in February 1991 to deflect the criticism of Rajiv Gandhi's 



539 



India: A Country Study 



Congress (I), which argued that India's nominal pro-United 
States tilt betrayed the country's nonaligned principles. 

Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's September 1993 visit to 
Iran was hailed as "successful and useful" by the Indian media 
and seen as a vehicle for speeding up the improvement of bilat- 
eral relations. Kev developments included discussions on the 
construction of a pipeline to supply Iranian natural gas to 
India and allowing India to develop transit facilities in Iran for 
Indian products destined for the landlocked Central Asian 
republics. India also sought to assuage its concerns over a possi- 
ble Iranian-Central Asian republics nuclear nexus, which some 
saw as a potential and very serious threat to India should Paki- 
stan also join in an Islamic nuclear front aimed at India and 
Israel, When Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani visited 
India m April 1995 to sign a major trade accord (the accord 
also was signed by the minister of foreign affairs of Turkmeni- 
stan' and five bilateral agreements, India-Iranian relations 
could be seen to be on the upswing. 

Central Asia 

Until large parts of Central Asia were incorporated into the 
Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, relations 
between India and Central Asia had been close. During the 
post-1971 era of close Indian-Soviet relations, cultural 
exchanges flourished between India and the Central Asian 
republics. The dissolution of the Soviet Union forced India to 
construct policies to deal with the new political situation in the 
Central Asian republics. In 1991 and 1992, India established 
diplomatic relations with Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, 
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan and worked with these newly 
independent states to develop frameworks for diplomatic, eco- 
nomic. and cultural cooperation. Besides its long historical 
connections with this region, India sought good relations for 
several reasons: to prevent Pakistan from developing an anti- 
India coalition with the Central Asian states in the dispute over 
Kashmir, to persuade those states not to provide Pakistan with 
assistance in its nuclear program, to ensure continued contacts 
with long-standing commercial and military suppliers, and to 
provide new opportunities to Indian businesses. 

Normal diplomatic and trade relations are an Indian goal in 
relations with the Central Asian republics. For example, eco- 
nomic and cultural affairs were the focal point of Indian prime 
minister P.V. Narahimsa Rao's official visit to Uzbekistan and 



540 



Foreign Relations 



Kazakstan in May 1993. Security matters also are important as 
witnessed by a February 1995 visit to India by Kazakstan's 
defense minister. Adherence to democracy and secularism by 
these countries also was regarded by India as desirable in order 
to ensure stability and social progress. The geopolitical compe- 
tition between India and Pakistan for influence in these coun- 
tries is likely to be a long-tern factor. 

With regard to Afghanistan, India supported the Marxist 
regime in Kabul until its collapse in the spring of 1992. India 
then attempted to regain some influence in the country by 
cooperating with Iran to provide assistance to Dari-speaking 
and other minorities against the Pashtun groups backed by 
Pakistan in the ensuing civil war. 

Russia 

Despite the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the 
relationship between India and Russia remains one of consid- 
erable importance to both countries. Since the early 1950s, 
New Delhi and Moscow had built friendly relations on the basis 
of realpolitik. India's nonalignment enabled it to accept Soviet 
support in areas of strategic congruence, as in disputes with 
Pakistan and China, without subscribing to Soviet global poli- 
cies or proposals for Asian collective security. Close and coop- 
erative ties were forged in particular in the sectors of Indian 
industrial development and defense production and pur- 
chases. But the relationship was circumscribed by wide differ- 
ences in domestic and social systems and the absence of 
substantial people-to-people contact — in contrast to India's 
relations with the United States (see United States, this ch.). 

Ties between India and the Soviet Union initially were dis- 
tant. Nehru had expressed admiration for the Soviet Union's 
rapid economic transformation, but the Soviet Union regarded 
India as a "tool of Anglo-American imperialism." After Josef 
Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union expressed its hopes for 
"friendly cooperation" with India. This aim was prompted by 
the Soviet decision to broaden its international contacts and to 
cultivate the nonaligned and newly independent countries of 
Asia and Africa. Nehru's state visit to the Soviet Union in June 
1955 was the first of its kind for an Indian prime minister. It was 
followed by the trip of Premier Nikolai Bulganin and General 
Secretary Nikita Khrushchev to India in November and Decem- 
ber 1955. The Soviet leaders endorsed the entire range of 
Indian foreign policy based on the Panch Shila and supported 



541 



India: A Country Study 



India's position against Pakistan on Kashmir. The Soviet Union 
also supported India's position vis-a-vis Portugal on Goa, which 
was territorially integrated into India as a union territory by the 
Indian armed forces in December 1961 (it became a state in 
May 1987). 

The Soviet Union and some East European countries 
offered India new avenues of trade and economic assistance. 
By 1965 the Soviet Union was the second largest national con- 
tributor to India's development. These new arrangements con- 
tributed to India's emergence as a significant industrial power 
through the construction of plants to produce steel, heavy 
machinery and equipment, machine tools, and precision 
instruments, and to generate power and extract and refine 
petroleum. Soviet investment was in India's public-sector indus- 
try, which the World Bank (see Glossary) and Western indus- 
trial powers had been unwilling to assist until spurred by Soviet 
competition. Soviet aid was extended on the basis of long-term, 
government-to-government programs, which covered succes- 
sive phases of technical training for Indians, supply of raw 
materials, progressive use of Indian inputs, and markets for fin- 
ished products. Bilateral arrangements were made in noncon- 
vertible national currencies, helping to conserve India's scarce 
foreign exchange. Thus the Soviet contribution to Indian eco- 
nomic development was generally regarded by foreign and 
domestic observers as positive (see Foreign Economic Rela- 
tions, ch. 6). 

Nehru obtained a Soviet commitment to neutrality on the 
India-China border dispute and war of 1962. During the India- 
Pakistan war of 1965, the Soviet Union acted with the United 
States in the UN Security Council to bring about a cease-fire. 
Soviet premier Aleksei N. Kosygin went further by offering his 
good offices for a negotiated settlement, which took place at 
Tashkent on January 10, 1966. Until 1969 the Soviet Union 
took an evenhanded position in South Asia and supplied a lim- 
ited quantity of arms to Pakistan in 1968. From 1959 India had 
accepted Soviet offers of military sales. Indian acquisition of 
Soviet military equipment was important because purchases 
were made against deferred rupee payments, a major conces- 
sion to India's chronic shortage of foreign exchange. Simulta- 
neous provisions were made for licensed manufacture and 
modification in India, one criterion of self-reliant defense on 
which India placed increasing emphasis. In addition, Soviet 
sales were made without any demands for restricted deploy- 



542 



Foreign Relations 



ment, adjustments in Indian policies toward other countries, 
adherence to Soviet global policies, or acceptance of Soviet 
military advisers. In this way, Indian national autonomy was not 
compromised. 

The most intimate phase in relations between India and the 
Soviet Union was the period between 1971 and 1976: its high- 
light was the twenty-year Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and 
Cooperation of August 1971. Articles 8, 9, and 10 of the treaty 
committed the parties "to abstain from providing any assistance 
to any third party that engages in armed conflict with the 
other" and "in the event of either party being subjected to an 
attack or threat thereof ... to immediately enter into mutual 
consultations." India benefited at the time because the Soviet 
Union came to support the Indian position on Bangladesh and 
because the treaty acted as a deterrent to China. New Delhi 
also received accelerated shipments of Soviet military equip- 
ment in the last quarter of 1971. The first state visit of Soviet 
president Leonid Brezhnev to India in November 1973 was 
conducted with tremendous fanfare and stressed the theme of 
economic cooperation. By the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was 
India's largest trading partner. 

The friendship treaty notwithstanding, Indira Gandhi did 
not alter important principles of Indian foreign policy. She 
made it clear that the Soviet Union would not receive any spe- 
cial privileges — much less naval base rights — in Indian ports, 
despite the major Soviet contribution to the construction of 
shipbuilding and ship-repair facilities at Bombay on the west 
coast and at Vishakhapatnam on the east coast. India's advo- 
cacy of the Indian Ocean as a zone of peace was directed 
against aggrandizement of the Soviet naval presence as much 
as that of other extraregional powers. By repeatedly emphasiz- 
ing the nonexclusive nature of its friendship with the Soviet 
Union, India kept open the way for normalizing relations with 
China and improving ties with the West. 

After the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, Indian diplo- 
mats avoided condemnatory language and resolutions as use- 
less Cold War exercises that could only antagonize the Soviet 
Union and postpone political settlement. They called instead 
for withdrawal of all foreign troops and negotiation among 
concerned parties. In meetings with Soviet leaders in New 
Delhi in 1980 and in Moscow in 1982, Indira Gandhi privately 
pressed harder for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and for the 



543 



India: A County Study 

restoration of .Afghanistan's traditional nonalignment and 
independence. 

Rajiv Gandhi journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1985, 1986,. 
1987, and 1989, and Soviet president Mikhail S. Gorbachev 
traveled to India in 1986 and 1988. These visits and those of 
other high officials evoked effusive references to the "exem- 
plary" (in Gorbachev's term) friendship between the two coun- 
tries and also achieved the conclusion of agreements to expand 
economic, cultural, and scientific and technological coopera- 
tion. In 1985 and 1986, and again in 1988, both nations signed 
pacts to boost bilateral trade and provide Soviet investment 
and technical assistance for Indian industrial, telecommunica- 
tions, and transportation projects. In 1985 and 1988, the Soviet 
Union also extended to India credits of 1 billion rubles and 3 
billion rubles, respectively (a total of about USS2.4 billion), for 
the purchase of Soviet machinery and goods. Protocols for sci- 
entific cooperation, signed in 1985 and 1987, provided the 
framework for joint research and projects in space science and 
such high-technology areas as biotechnology, computers, and 
lasers. The flow of advanced Soviet military equipment also 
continued in the mid- and late 1980s (see The Air Force, ch. 
10). 

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, India was faced with 
the difficult task of reorienting its external affairs and forging 
relations with the fifteen Soviet successor states, of which Rus- 
sia was the most important (see Central Asia, this ch.). In 1993 
New Delhi and Moscow worked to redefine their relationship 
according to post-Cold War realities. During the Januarv 1993 
visit of Russian president Boris Yeltsin to India, the two coun- 
tries signed agreements that signaled a new emphasis on eco- 
nomic cooperation in bilateral relations. The 1971 treaty was 
replaced with the new Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, 
w r hich dropped securitv clauses that in the Cold War were 
directed against the United States and China. Yeltsin stated 
that Russia would deliver cryogenic engines and space technol- 
ogy for India's space program under a USS350 million deal 
between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and 
the Russian space agency, Glavkosmos, despite the imposition 
of sanctions on both organizations by the United States. In 
addition, Yeltsin expressed strong support for India's stand on 
Kashmir. A defense cooperation accord aimed at ensuring the 
continued supply of Russian arms and spare parts to satisfy the 
requirements of India's military and at promoting the joint 



544 



Foreign Relations 



production of defense equipment. Bilateral trade, which had 
fallen drastically during the 1990-92 period, was expected to 
revive following the resolution of the dispute over New Delhi's 
debt to Moscow and the May 1992 decision to abandon the 
1978 rupee-ruble trade agreement in favor of the use of hard 
currency. 

Pressure from the United States, which believed the engines 
and technology could be diverted to ballistic missile develop- 
ment, led the Russians to cancel most of the deal in July 1993. 
Russia did, however, supply rockets to help India to develop the 
technology to launch geostationary satellites, and, with cryo- 
genic engine plans already in hand, the ISRO was determined 
to produce its own engines by 1997 (see Space and Nuclear 
Programs, ch. 10). 

Despite Yeltsin's call for a realignment of Russia, India, and 
China to balance the West, Russia shares interests with the 
developed countries on nuclear proliferation issues. In Novem- 
ber 1991, Moscow voted for a Pakistani-sponsored UN resolu- 
tion calling for the establishment of a South Asian nuclear-free 
zone. Russia urged India to support the Treaty on the Non-Pro- 
liferation of Nuclear Weapons and decided in March 1992 to 
apply "full-scope safeguards" to future nuclear supply agree- 
ments. Russia also shares interests with the United States in 
cooling antagonisms between India and Pakistan, particularly 
with regard to Kashmir, thus making it unlikely that India 
could count on Russia in a future dispute with Pakistan. 

Rao reciprocated Yeltsin's visit in July 1994. The two leaders 
signed declarations assuring international and bilateral good- 
will and continuation of Russian arms and military equipment 
exports to India. Rao's Moscow visit lacked the controversy that 
characterized his May 1994 visit to the United States and was 
deemed an important success because of the various accords, 
one of which restored the sale of cryogenic engines to India. 

Bilateral relations between India and Russia improved as a 
result of eight agreements signed in December 1994. The 
agreements cover military and technical cooperation from 
1995 to 2000, merchant shipping, and promotion and mutual 
protection of investments, trade, and outer space cooperation. 
Political observers saw the visit of Russian prime minister Vik- 
tor Chernomyrdin that occasioned the signing of the eight 
agreements as a sign of a return to the earlier course of warm 
relations between New Delhi and Moscow. In March 1995, 
India and Russia signed agreements aimed at suppressing ille- 



545 



India: A Country Study 



gal weapons smuggling and drug trafficking. And when Rus- 
sian nationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky visited India in March 
1995, he declared that he would give India large supplies of 
arms and military hardware if he were elected president of Rus- 
sia. 

United States 

With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of India's 
more outward-looking economic policies, the United States 
became increasingly important for India. In the mid-1990s, the 
United States was India's largest trading partner and a major 
source of technology and investment (see Aid; Trade, ch. 6). 
Indian students more than ever sought higher education in the 
United States, especially in the areas of science and engineer- 
ing. Moreover, the presence of the more than 1 million Indians 
and Indian Americans residing in the United States was a factor 
in the relationship. Some foreign policy makers also saw India's 
strong democratic tradition, although much younger than that 
of the United States, as an important ingredient in India- 
United States relations. Despite the asymmetrical relationship 
that had existed since 1947, the areas of common interest con- 
verged in the early 1990s as the benefits of good relations were 
perceived on both sides. Some Indian observers, however, felt 
that the United States had a "negative agenda" concerning 
India with respect to human rights, the nuclear program, and 
the pace of economic reforms. Furthermore, India's long 
adherence to the principles of nonalignment has had an inhib- 
iting effect on its evolving relations with the United States. Nev- 
ertheless, some opinion makers believed that an India-United 
States strategic alliance later in the 1990s was a possibility. 

Until 1971 nonalignment had a dual effect on United States 
policies in South Asia. On the one hand, Washington consid- 
ered Indian economic and political stability necessary to pre- 
vent that important regional player from succumbing to 
communism and Soviet influence; hence the United States 
gave economic assistance and support to India during its 1962 
war with China (see External Aid, ch. 7). On the other hand, 
India's nonalignment had led the United States in 1954 to ally 
itself with Pakistan, which appeared to support Western secu- 
rity interests. The United States-Pakistan alliance was renewed 
in 1959, with accompanying assurances from President Dwight 
D. Eisenhower to Nehru that the arms supplied to Pakistan 
would not be used in any aggressive war. When Pakistan and 



546 



Foreign Relations 



India went to war in 1965, the United States government 
refused to support India and suspended military transfers to 
both countries. 

In 1971 the intertwining of the United States-Soviet, Chi- 
nese-Soviet, and Indian-Pakistani conflicts dragged India- 
United States relations to the nadir. That year, while Washing- 
ton initiated a new relationship with Beijing, New Delhi signed 
a friendship treaty with Moscow to counteract United States 
and Chinese influence in South Asia. As the situation in East 
Pakistan deteriorated, India was unable to convince the United 
States to cease arms deliveries to Pakistan and persuade Paki- 
stan's leaders to reach a political settlement with East Pakistan's 
elected representatives. Indira Gandhi's November 1971 visit to 
Washington failed to alter President Richard M. Nixon's pro- 
Pakistan stance. When war formally began after Pakistani 
strikes on Indian airfields in early December 1971, the United 
States and China voted for a cease-fire in the UN Security 
Council, but the Soviet Union's veto prevented any resolution 
from coming into effect. Washington's subsequent deployment 
of a naval task force to the Bay of Bengal left many in India con- 
vinced that the United States was a major security threat. 

Relations between India and the United States verged on the 
antagonistic throughout the 1970s. After Nixon abruptly termi- 
nated US$82 million in economic assistance, India closed 
down a large United States Agency for International Develop- 
ment program. The Indian government also restricted the flow 
of American scholars and students to India. India's criticisms of 
United States policies in Vietnam and Cambodia increased, 
and it upgraded its representation in Hanoi. When the United 
States expanded its naval base on the island of Diego Garcia 
and engaged in naval exercises with Pakistan in the Indian 
Ocean in 1974, India saw its security further threatened. Both 
governments, however, attempted to limit the damage to bilat- 
eral relations. A 1973 agreement defused a dispute over United 
States rupee holdings by writing off more than 50 percent of 
the debt and directing use of the remainder to mutually accept- 
able programs. In 1974 the Indo-United States Joint Commis- 
sion was established to insulate bilateral dealings in education 
and culture, economics, and science and technology from 
political controversy and to provide mechanisms for regular 
exchanges at high levels of public life. 

Hopes for improved relations were expressed in 1977 when 
Jimmy Carter became president of the United States and the 



547 



India: A Country Study 



Janata Party government led by Morarji Desai took over in 
India (see Political Parties, ch. 8). These expectations came to 
an abrupt end two years later when the Soviet Union invaded 
Afghanistan. The promulgation of the Carter Doctrine, estab- 
lishment of the Rapid Deployment Force (later called the 
United States Central Command) and an Indian Ocean fleet, 
planned expansion of the naval base at Diego Garcia, and 
arrangements to supply Pakistan with US$3.2 billion in military 
and economic aid over five years all appeared as direct United 
States intervention in the countries of the Persian Gulf and 
Indian Ocean. These actions fueled instability in the region 
and, in India's view, threatened India's security. 

The personal rapport between Indira Gandhi and United 
States president Ronald Reagan, established during a series of 
meetings in the early 1980s, enabled the two countries gradu- 
ally to begin improving bilateral relations. The Reagan admin- 
istration reassessed its policy toward India and decided to 
expand areas of cooperation, particularly in the economic and 
scientific realms, as a means of counteracting Soviet influence 
in the region. Washington also regarded New Delhi's status as 
the major regional power in South Asia in a more favorable 
light. For her part, Gandhi realized that India was unable to 
block United States arms sales to Pakistan, but that improved 
dialogue with the United States could open other areas of 
interaction that could benefit Indian interests. Indira Gandhi's 
highly successful 1982 state visit to the United States was fol- 
lowed by a series of high-level exchanges, including the visits of 
Vice President George Bush and Secretary of State George 
Shultz to India. In addition, in 1982 the two sides resolved their 
dispute concerning supplies of fuel and spare parts for the 
nuclear power plant at Tarapur. In 1984 the United States 
decided to expand technology transfers to India. 

The warming trend in relations between New Delhi and 
Washington continued with the 1985 and 1987 visits by Prime 
Minister Rajiv Gandhi to Washington. Furthermore, as the 
United States appreciation of India's role as a force for stability 
in South Asia grew, Washington supported New Delhi's moves 
in Sri Lanka in 1987 and in Maldives in 1988. In the mid- and 
late 1980s, visits exchanged by the United States secretary of 
defense and the Indian minister of defence symbolized a mod- 
est but growing program of cooperation in military technology 
and other defense matters. In 1988 Washington and New Delhi 
finalized an accord to provide United States technology for 



548 



Foreign Relations 



India's light combat aircraft program and also agreed to trans- 
fer technology for the F-5 fighter. Cooperation between India 
and the United States in a variety of scientific fields followed 
the signing of a bilateral agreement on scientific and techno- 
logical exchanges in 1985. Nonmilitary technology transfers 
also accelerated, and in 1987 India purchased a Cray super- 
computer for agricultural research and weather forecasting 
and accepted stringent United States safeguards to preclude 
military uses. Furthermore, economic liberalization measures 
paved the way for increased trade and United States investment 
in India. In 1988 the improved economic climate resulted in 
the conclusion of a deal for a Pepsi-Cola plant and the signing 
of a bilateral tax treaty. In 1989 United States investment in 
India reached US$1 billion. 

In the 1980s, the Indian and United States governments had 
divergent views on a wide range of international issues, includ- 
ing Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Middle East, and Central 
America. Serious differences also remained over United States 
policy toward Pakistan and the issue of nuclear proliferation. 
India was repeatedly incensed in the 1980s when the United 
States provided advanced military technology and other assis- 
tance to Pakistan. New Delhi also found objectionable Wash- 
ington's unwillingness to cut off military assistance to 
Islamabad despite United States concerns about Pakistan's 
covert nuclear program. For its part, Washington continued to 
urge New Delhi to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of 
Nuclear Weapons and, after the successful test launch of the 
Indian Agni intermediate-range ballistic missile in May 1989, 
called on New Delhi to refrain from developing a ballistic mis- 
sile capability by adhering to the restrictions of the Missile 
Technology Control Regime. India rejected these appeals on 
the grounds that it had a right to develop such technology and 
that the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 
and the United States-sponsored Missile Technology Control 
Regime discriminated against nonnuclear states. 

Bureaucratic and private-sector resistance to foreign partici- 
pation in the economy, infrastructure problems, bureaucratic 
red tape, and legal problems remained formidable obstacles to 
significant Indian-United States economic cooperation. In the 
late 1980s, India had differences with the United States over 
improving its legal protection of intellectual property rights, 
opening its markets to American service industries, and liberal- 
izing its foreign investment regulations. In April 1991, the 



549 



India: A Country Study 

Office of the United States Trade Representative placed India 
on Washington's watch list over intellectual property rights 
issues. Six months later, the United States gave India a three- 
month grace period before imposing retaliatory sanctions 
against India's pharmaceutical industry for inadequate patent 
protection. India resisted United States pressure to adopt a less 
protectionist stance in the Uruguay Round of negotiations to 
renew the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). 

In the early 1990s, economic reforms permitted a qualitative 
breakthrough in relations between India and the United 
States. Washington was instrumental in speeding a US$1.8 bil- 
lion IMF credit that New Delhi obtained in January 1991 to 
deal with a severe external-debt-payments crisis. In 1990 India 
and the United States signed a double taxation pact designed 
to facilitate American investment in India, further breaking a 
thirty-year deadlock in economic relations. The United States 
provided only modest bilateral economic assistance in the form 
of food aid but was India's largest trading partner and an 
important source of investments and technology. In December 
1990, the United States approved the export of a second Cray 
supercomputer for the Indian Institute of Science in Banga- 
lore, Karnataka, although the deal fell through two years later 
because of India's unwillingness to accept safeguards to pre- 
vent the computer's diversion to military uses. 

The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 had led 
Washington to reassess its relationship with Pakistan, with posi- 
tive ramifications for New Delhi. Without containment of the 
Soviet Union as the driving factor behind close Pakistani- 
United States ties, and concerns mounting about Pakistan's 
nuclear weapons program, the United States suspended mili- 
tary and economic assistance to that country in October 1990. 
New Delhi appreciated this action and was relieved in summer 
1991 when the United States Congress voted not to include 
India in the Pressler Amendment, which forbade United States 
assistance to Pakistan if it violated nuclear nonproliferation cri- 
teria. Washington also took a more evenhanded approach to 
the Kashmir problem in 1990, urging both antagonists to 
resolve their dispute peacefully under the terms of the Simla 
Accord. Furthermore, the United States began pressuring Paki- 
stan to end its support for Kashmiri and Punjabi Sikh separat- 
ists. This pressure was in addition to efforts initiated in the 
1980s to prevent assistance to Sikh terrorists from the Sikh 
expatriate community in the United States (see Rajiv Gandhi, 



550 



Foreign Relations 



ch. 1). In the wake of terrorist bombings in Bombay in March 
1993 — widely believed in India to have been instigated by Paki- 
stanis — and stepped-up activities among Kashmiri militants, 
Indian politicians and the media reveled in the possibility that 
the United States might declare Pakistan a practitioner of state- 
sponsored terrorism. Washington's decision in July 1993 not to 
declare Pakistan a terrorist-supporting state displeased many 
prominent Indians, and Indian political analysts accused the 
United States of having a "double standard" in regard to spe- 
cific states sponsoring terrorism. 

Military cooperation also grew. Exchanges of senior military 
officials became frequent, a high-level bilateral conference on 
regional security affairs was held, and Minister of Defence 
Sharad Pawar journeyed to Washington in April 1992 to discuss 
arms supplies and military technology. Not only did United 
States navy ships make occasional ports calls in India, but the 
two navies conducted their first-ever joint exercise in May 1992. 
Indian officials came to have a greater appreciation of United 
States interests in maintaining a military presence on Diego 
Garcia and in the Persian Gulf. 

In 1993, India and the United States appeared committed to 
improve relations and bilateral cooperation despite differences 
over India's refusal to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation 
of Nuclear Weapons and to participate in discussions with the 
United States, Russia, China, and Pakistan on establishing a 
South Asian nuclear-free zone. Nevertheless, Washington 
directed its efforts to creating a climate of restraint between 
New Delhi and Islamabad in order to freeze or roll back their 
nuclear weapons programs. However, India and the United 
States remained wary of each other's long-term strategy region- 
ally and globally. 

Some Indian political analysts criticize the United States for 
following a "two-track policy." On the one hand, Washington 
has supported New Delhi's economic reform and has facili- 
tated international loans to India, but, on the other, it has 
relentlessly pursued an agenda to force India's accession to 
United States nonproliferation goals and has used human 
rights issues to try to force India to meet Washington's political 
objections. Moreover, many Indians have expressed worries 
that, with the emergence of the United States as the sole super- 
power, and as the leader of a Western-dominated coalition after 
the Persian Gulf War, Washington might attempt to impose its 
own standards for democratic values, human rights, and free 



551 



India: A Country Study 

markets. India fears that a United States vision of a new world 
order not only would hurt the interests of Third World coun- 
tries economically and politically, but also would damage 
India's drive to become a leading power in a multipolar system. 
Washington's decision not to place Pakistan on its list of 
nations that sponsor terrorism and its successful efforts in get- 
ting Russia to cancel the sale of cryogenic engines to India are 
seen as detrimental to good Indian-United States relations. 

In the midst of increasing anti-United States political rheto- 
ric and newspaper headlines, Indian and United States officials 
have seemed to agree on only one thing, that bilateral relations 
had reached their lowest point in two decades. Observers in 
both countries believe that the administration of President Wil- 
liam Clinton places a low priority on relations with India 
despite the fact that the United States has become India's 
prime trade partner. Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Rao 
visited the United States in May 1994 for an uneventful round 
of talks with President Clinton, who encouraged India's eco- 
nomic reforms. Six memorandums of understanding were 
signed with the intent of expanding official contacts, reviewing 
and updating a 1984 understanding on high-technology trans- 
fer, enhancing defense cooperation, stimulating bilateral ties, 
and establishing a business partnership initiative. 

High-level visits to India in early 1995 portended greater sta- 
bility in India-United States relations. Secretary of Defense Wil- 
liam J. Perry visited New Delhi in January to sign a "landmark 
agreement" on military cooperation that was seen by some 
local observers as a convergence in India-United States security 
perceptions after nearly fifty years of divergent viewpoints (see 
National Security Challenges, ch. 10). Following the Perry visit 
was a commercial mission led by Secretary of Commerce 
Ronald H. Brown that also occurred in January. Agreements 
signed by Indian and United States businesses during the visit 
resulted in US$7 billion in contracts and investments in the 
communications, health care, insurance, finance, and automo- 
tive sectors. Some of the deals consummated were intended to 
build the infrastructure needed by foreign firms to do business 
in India. In March 1995, Hilary Rodham Clinton, the wife of 
the United States president, toured India as part of an exten- 
sive South Asian goodwill tour. In April, Secretary of the Trea- 
sury Robert E. Rubin visited New Delhi to sign a bilateral 
investment protection treaty reflecting the substantial increases 
in United States investment in India since 1991 and Washing- 



552 



Prime Minister RV. Narasimha Rao and President William Clinton in 

Washington 
Courtesy The White House 



ton's encouragement to India to apply for Agency for Interna- 
tional Development loans. 

Britain, Australia, Canada, Western Europe, and Japan 

From the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, independent India's 
most important relationship was with Britain. New Delhi and 
London had special relations because of common historical 
ties, political institutions, interest in economic development, 
high levels of trade between India and Britain, and British 
investment in India. Despite this special relationship, Nehru's 
policy of nonalignment was designed, in part, to prevent India 
from becoming too dependent on Britain and other former 
colonial powers. In spite of cooperation with Australia, Britain, 
and Canada in the Commonwealth of Nations — which was 



553 



India: A Country Study 



established by Britain in 1931 — India's nonaligned stance fre- 
quently put India at odds with Britain, the United States, and 
other Western countries on Cold War and anticolonial issues 
(see Commonwealth of Nations, this ch.). Nevertheless, com- 
mon democratic principles and the willingness of the devel- 
oped countries to provide economic assistance prompted India 
to build modest but constructive relations with these countries. 

India's relations with Britain remain important. India has so 
successfully diversified its economic ties that London's domina- 
tion is no longer a consideration for New Delhi; British trade, 
investment, and aid, however, are still significant. A substantial 
community of people of Indian origin live in Britain, contribut- 
ing to the business and intellectual life of the country. Eco- 
nomic relations were improving in the early and mid-1990s 
with the implementation of India's economic reforms. Political 
differences stemming from India's nonaligned stance tended 
to dissipate with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of 
the apartheid system in South Africa. 

From the mid-1960s until the early 1980s, the difficulties 
encountered in conducting trade and investing in India caused 
countries such as Japan and the Federal Republic of Germany 
(West Germany) to seek more fruitful commercial opportuni- 
ties elsewhere in the developing world. In the sphere of inter- 
national politics, the intricacies of balancing ties with India and 
Pakistan, India's tilt toward the Soviet Union beginning in 
1971, divergent views on nuclear proliferation issues, and the 
situations in Afghanistan and Cambodia left little room for 
improvement of relations with Japan and Western Europe. 
Modest moves taken to liberalize the Indian economy in the 
early and mid-1980s and increased availability of private invest- 
ment and official developmental assistance from developed 
countries, however, provided India with the opportunity to 
increase trade and obtain aid and investment from Japan and 
Europe. Indian trade with countries of the European Eco- 
nomic Community rose dramatically, and Japan became India's 
largest aid donor. By the late 1980s, Indian, West European, 
and Japanese leaders exchanged regular visits. 

In the early 1990s, expanding Indian exports and attracting 
investment from developed countries became a major priority 
in India's bilateral relations. India developed closer ties with 
Berlin — now the capital of a united Germany — Tokyo, and the 
European Economic Community (later the European Union) 
to promote Indian economic interests and enhance its diplo- 



554 



Indian naval contingent marching in an Australia Day parade, 

Canberra 

Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 

matic maneuverability. Japan remained India's major source of 
bilateral assistance, and Berlin was New Delhi's largest trading 
partner in the European Economic Community. Nevertheless, 
India and the developed countries had differences over secu- 
rity and nuclear issues and the attachment of political criteria 
to developmental assistance. 

Relations with Australia suffered in 1990 and 1991 as India 
expressed its displeasure with Australia's sale of Mirage fighters 
to Pakistan. In 1991 the German government announced it was 
cutting official aid to India because of "excessive armament," 
while the British, Canadian, and Japanese governments warned 
India that future assistance would be cut back if India did not 
curtail its high levels of military spending, which the developed 
countries contend suppressed economic development. In addi- 
tion, Britain, France, and Germany also increased pressure on 
India to sign the nonproliferation treaty, and France cautioned 
India that any future agreements to supply India with nuclear 
material and technology must adhere to "full-scope safeguards" 
to prevent diversion to nuclear weapons production. Finally, 
India remained concerned that developed countries would 
impose human rights conditions as criteria for economic aid. 

Participation in International Organizations 

United Nations 

During the Cold War, India's participation in the UN was 
notable for its efforts to resist the imposition of superpower dis- 



555 



India: A Country Study 



putes on UN General Assembly debates and to focus interna- 
tional attention on the problems of economic development. In 
the early 1950s, India attempted unsuccessfully to help China 
join the UN. India's mediatory role in resolving the stalemate 
over prisoners of war in Korea led to the signing of the armi- 
stice ending the Korean War. India chaired the five-member 
Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission while the Indian 
Custodian Force supervised the process of interviews and repa- 
triation that followed. The UN entrusted Indian armed forces 
with subsequent peace missions in the Middle East, Cyprus, 
and the Congo (since 1971, Zaire). India also served as chair of 
the three international commissions for supervision and con- 
trol for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos established by the 1954 
Geneva Accords on Indochina (see Peacekeeping Operations, 
ch. 10). 

Although not a permanent member of the UN Security 
Council, India has been elected periodically to fill a nonperma- 
nent seat, and during the 1991-92 period served in that capac- 
ity. In the early 1990s, New Delhi supported reform of the UN 
in the hope of securing a permanent seat on the Security 
Council. This development would recognize India's position as 
the second-largest population (possibly the largest in the early 
twenty-first century) in the world, with an economy projected 
by some to become the fourth largest, after China, the United 
States, and Japan, by 2020. 

India also has served as a member of many UN bodies — 
including the Economic and Social Council, the Human Rights 
Commission, and the Disarmament Commission — and on the 
board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 
In addition, India played a prominent role in articulating the 
economic concerns of developing countries in such UN-spon- 
sored conferences as the triennial UN Conference on Trade 
and Development and the 1992 Conference on the Environ- 
ment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. 

Commonwealth of Nations 

India is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the 
multinational association of Britain and its former colonies. 
Although Nehru initially considered withdrawal from this orga- 
nization, he decided to retain membership to prevent isolation 
in the bipolar international system, to prevent the Common- 
wealth from becoming pro-Pakistan, to have access to Western 
economic assistance and military equipment without excessive 



556 



Nehru and Indian delegation at the United Nations, 1960 
Courtesy U.S. News and World Report Collection, Library of Congress 

dependence on the United States, and to convert the Com- 
monwealth from an extension of the British Empire to a multi- 
racial association of equal states. India actively participates m 
Commonwealth affairs and has found the organization a useful 
forum in which to voice its concerns on such matters as apart- 
heid, race relations, and citizenship rights, as well as a source oi 
economic assistance under the Colombo Plan for Cooperative 
Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific 
(Colombo Plan-see Glossary). In 1989 the Indian govern- 
ment under Rajiv Gandhi sponsored Pakistan's reapphcation 
for Commonwealth membership under the civilian leadership 
of Benazir Bhutto. In the early 1990s, with Indian approval, 
Commonwealth priorities were enlarged to include the impor- 
tance of democratic institutions and human rights. 

Nonaligned Movement 

India played an important role in the multilateral move- 



557 



India: A Country Study 

ments of colonies and newly independent countries that devel- 
oped into the Nonaligned Movement. The movement had its 
origins in the 1947 Asian Relations Meeting in New Delhi and 
the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. 
India also participated in the 1961 Belgrade Conference that 
officially established the Nonaligned Movement, but Nehru's 
declining prestige limited his influence. In the 1960s and 
1970s, New Delhi concentrated on internal problems and bilat- 
eral relations, yet retained membership in an increasingly fac- 
tionalized and radicalized movement. During the contentious 
1979 Havana summit, India worked with moderate nations to 
reject Cuban president Fidel Castro's proposition that "social- 
ism" (that is, the Soviet Union) was the "natural ally" of non- 
alignment. 

Under Indira Gandhi in the early 1980s, India attempted to 
reassert its prominent role in the Nonaligned Movement by 
focusing on the relationship between disarmament and eco- 
nomic development. By appealing to the economic grievances 
of developing countries, Indira Gandhi and her successors 
exercised a moderating influence on the Nonaligned Move- 
ment, diverting it from some of the Cold War issues that 
marred the controversial 1979 Havana meeting. Although host- 
ing the 1983 summit boosted Indian prestige within the move- 
ment, its close relations with the Soviet Union and its pro- 
Soviet positions on Afghanistan and Cambodia limited its influ- 
ence. 

The end of the Cold War left the Nonaligned Movement 
without its original raison d'etre, and its membership became 
deeply divided over international disputes, strategy, and orga- 
nization. During the 1992 Jakarta summit, India took a middle 
position between countries favoring confrontation with devel- 
oped nations on international economic issues, such as Malay- 
sia, and those that favored a more cooperative approach, such 
as Indonesia. Although New Delhi played a minor role com- 
pared with Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta on most issues facing the 
summit, India formulated the Nonaligned Movement position 
opposing developed countries' linkage of foreign aid to human 
rights criteria. 

India also is a founding member of the Group of Fifteen 
(see Glossary) , a group of developing nations established at the 
ninth Nonaligned Movement summit in Belgrade in 1989 to 
facilitate dialogue with the industrialized countries. India 
played host to the fourth Group of Fifteen summit in March 



558 



Foreign Relations 



1994. At the summit, Prime Minister Rao and other leaders 
expressed concern over new trade barriers being raised by the 
industrialized countries despite the conclusion of a new world 
trade agreement. 

South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation 

India is a member of SAARC, along with Pakistan, Ban- 
gladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Maldives. SAARC, 
which slowly emerged out of the initiative of Bangladesh in 
1980, was formally inaugurated in 1985. SAARC, which has a 
permanent secretariat in Kathmandu, is funded by voluntary 
contributions and operates on the principle of unanimity in 
decision making. Discussion of contentious bilateral issues is 
excluded from the SAARC charter at Indian insistence. 
Instead, SAARC programs exist in the areas of agriculture, 
rural development, transportation and telecommunications, 
meteorology, health and population control, postal services, 
science and technology, culture and sports, women in develop- 
ment, drug trafficking and abuse, and terrorism. By the mid- 
1990s, SAARC had yet to become an effective regional organi- 
zation, largely because of mutual distrust between India and its 
neighbors. India's lukewarm support for SAARC stems from 
the concern that its neighbors might coalesce against it to the 
detriment of Indian interests. The reluctance of India and 
other South Asian countries to turn SAARC into a forum for 
resolving major regional disputes hampers SAARC's ability to 
deal with many of South Asia's economic and political prob- 
lems. Nonetheless, when SAARC's eighth summit was held in 
New Delhi in May 1995, the conferees declared their nations' 
commitment to eradicating poverty in South Asia by 2002. 

* * * 

There is an extensive English-language literature on India's 
foreign relations. Indian government publications — the Minis- 
try of External Affairs's Annual Report and the monthly Foreign 
Affairs Record, and the Parliament's Compendium of Policy State- 
ments Made in the Parliament: External Affairs — are important 
official sources of information. The annual edition of Yearbook 
on India' s Foreign Policy contains a useful survey of foreign pol- 
icy trends as well as articles on bilateral relations. The Economic 
and Political Weekly [Bombay] provides a nongovernmental 
point of view on a wide range of current issues. Asia Yearbook, 



559 



India: A Country Study 

published by the Far Eastern Economic Review in Hong Kong, 
also includes a review of India's foreign relations for the previ- 
ous year. 

A large number of books and articles are published each 
year on specific subjects such as nonalignment, foreign aid, 
nuclear issues, and specific bilateral relations. The speeches 
and writings of Jawaharlal Nehru offer considerable insight 
into the rationale and direction of Indian foreign policy during 
the Cold War period. Norman D. Palmer's The United States and 
India, Selig Harrison and Geoffrey Kemp's India and America 
after the Cold War, Robert C. Horn's Soviet-Indian Relations, and 
Peter J. S. Duncan's The Soviet Union and India are good analyti- 
cal studies of India's relations with the superpowers. Compre- 
hensive surveys of Indian foreign relations before the end of 
the Cold War are found in Charles Heimseth and Surjit 
Mansingh's A Diplomatic History of Modern India for the period 
1911-65, Mansingh's India's Search for Power: Indira Gandhi's For- 
eign Policy, 1966-1982, and Robert W. Bradnock's India 's Foreign 
Policy since 1971. Two books that deal with India's foreign policy 
decision making and the domestic political structure underly- 
ing it are Jayant Bandyopadhyaya's The Making of India's Foreign 
Policy and Shashi Tharoor's Reasons of State. Articles on the 
changes in India's foreign policy and foreign relations since the 
end of the Cold War have appeared in the scholarly and peri- 
odical literature, of which Asian Survey and Far Eastern Economic 
Review are good sources. Annual editions of the Association for 
Asian Studies' Bibliography of Asian Studies provide comprehen- 
sive retrospective source citations. (For further information 
and complete citations, see Bibliography.) 



560 



Chapter 10. National Security 




Battling horseman from a nineteenth-century wall painting, Gujarat 



THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES have undergone a substantial 
metamorphosis since the emergence of India and Pakistan 
from the British Indian Empire in 1947. India's first prime min- 
ister, Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64), had deliberately limited the 
expansion and modernization of the armed forces. The ratio- 
nale was twofold: Nehru was acutely concerned about the 
accelerating costs of defense spending, and he feared that an 
excessive emphasis on the armed forces would lead to the mili- 
tarization of society and undermine the nation's fledgling dem- 
ocratic institutions. The disastrous performance of the Indian 
army during the 1962 border war with China, however, led to a 
reappraisal of defense strategy and spending. Nehru's legacy 
eroded rapidly as increasing emphasis was placed on defense 
needs. The success of the Indian military against Pakistan dur- 
ing their 1971 war contributed to restoring the morale and 
standing in society of the armed forces. During the rest of the 
1970s and in the 1980s, India bolstered its regional preemi- 
nence with wide-ranging arms transfers from the Soviet Union. 
In the late 1980s, in an effort to reduce its dependence on 
Soviet weaponry, India began to diversify its arms sources. It 
purchased aircraft, submarines, and long-range artillery pieces 
from France, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Ger- 
many), Sweden, and Britain. Simultaneously, it continued its 
efforts to expand and strengthen domestic capabilities to man- 
ufacture a range of weaponry to maximize self-reliance. The 
results of these purchases and self-reliance efforts have been 
mixed. 

The 1980s saw not only substantial growth in Indian defense 
expenditures but also the use of the armed forces in support of 
larger foreign and security policy goals. Specifically, the army 
saw action against Pakistani military personnel in disputed 
areas along the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and Kashmir, 
deployed at considerable cost as diplomatic efforts failed. All 
three branches of the armed forces, but particularly the army, 
were used to pursue India's security and foreign policy objec- 
tives in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s (see South Asia, ch. 9). More 
than 60,000 soldiers were deployed in Sri Lanka as part of the 
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to enforce the terms of the 
1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Designed to serve as a neutral 
force between contending ethnic forces, the IPKF became 



563 



India: A Country Study 



enmeshed in operations against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil 
Eelam (LTTE). In 1989 the new Sri Lankan president, Rana- 
singhe Premadasa, ended a five-and-a-half-year state of emer- 
gency and asked India to withdraw the IPKF. Accordingly, 
Indian army units returned home with most goals unmet. 

In 1988 a smaller, much shorter-lived Indian expedition suc- 
cessfully ended a military coup attempt in Maldives and dem- 
onstrated the military's effective use of airborne and naval 
forces in a joint operation. 

India is the preeminent military power in South Asia, but its 
margin of superiority over Pakistan — its principal South Asian 
rival — has eroded because the central government of India is 
faced with severe budgetary constraints. In addition, the armed 
forces are no longer able to obtain sophisticated weaponry at 
highly subsidized prices from Russia, and substantial numbers 
of army units are tied down in various internal security duties. 
Insurgencies in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab have 
necessitated the use of the army in "aid-to-the-civil power" 
when the local police and central paramilitary forces are 
unable to maintain public order. Increasingly frequent out- 
breaks of communal violence also have necessitated the use of 
the army to restore calm. 

The increased reliance on the army for internal security 
duties generated concern among senior officers in the early 
1990s. Then chief of army staff General Sunith Francis Rod- 
rigues repeatedly expressed his misgivings about the inordinate 
use of the army to deal with civil problems because such actions 
increased the risk of politicizing the armed forces and reduced 
their battle readiness. Moreover, the very nature of counterin- 
surgent and counterterrorist operations exposed the army to 
charges of human rights violations. In 1993, at the insistence of 
the army, the government agreed to examine this growing 
problem. Discussions focused on improving the recruitment, 
training, and organization of the various central paramilitary 
forces. 

The air force and the navy underwent considerable growth 
and modernization during the 1980s, although their plans for 
modernization and expansion, like those of the army, were 
hobbled by financial constraints. Nevertheless, the navy has 
adequate capabilities for coastal defense as well as the protec- 
tion of offshore union territories in the Bay of Bengal and the 
Arabian Sea. The air force is equipped with modern combat 
aircraft and has moderate airlift capabilities. 



564 



National Security 



Human rights violations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, 
Punjab, and other parts of the country have largely been attrib- 
uted to the paramilitary forces. The army has willingly acknowl- 
edged that some lapses have occurred within its own ranks. It 
also has court-martialed officers and enlisted personnel 
charged with breaches of proper discipline and conduct. How- 
ever, the army has refused to divulge any details about the 
extent of these problems. The numbers of individuals prose- 
cuted, their ranks, and their names remain outside the public 
domain. Nevertheless, Amnesty International and Asia Watch 
have reported on incidents they have been able to document. 

Colonial-Era Developments 

Company Armies 

The roots of the modern Indian army are traced to the 
forces employed by the English (later British) East India Com- 
pany, chartered in 1600, and the French East India Company 
(Compagnie des Indes Orientales), established in 1664. The 
French, headquartered at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) by the 
1670s, were the first to raise Indian companies and use them in 
conjunction with European soldiers. Subsequently, in the 
1740s, the British started to organize and train Indian units. 
British units were divided into three armies corresponding to 
the company's centers of Bengal (headquartered at Fort Will- 
iam in Calcutta), Bombay (or Mumbai in the Marathi lan- 
guage), and Madras (headquartered at Fort Saint George). In 
1748 the East India Company armies were brought under the 
command of Stringer Lawrence, who is regarded by historians 
as the progenitor of the modern Indian army. Under his guid- 
ance, British officers recruited, trained, and deployed these 
forces. Although formally under a unified command, the three 
armies in practice exercised considerable autonomy because of 
the great distances that separated them. 

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the vast majority 
of the soldiers of each army was composed of Indian troops 
known as sepoys (from the Hindi sipahi, meaning police offi- 
cer, or, later, soldier). Sepoy units had Indian junior commis- 
sioned officers who could exercise only low-level command. 
British officers held all senior positions. No Indian had any 
authority over non-Indians. In addition to these all-Indian 
units, the British deployed some units of the British Army. 



565 



India: A Country Study 

The Indian Military under the British Raj 

Post-Sepoy Rebellion Reorganization 

Shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-58, the role of the 
presidency armies was reevaluated (see The British Raj, 1858- 
1947, ch. 1). In 1861 the Bengal Army was disbanded, and the 
total number of sepoys was reduced from 230,000 to 150,000 
while the British element was increased from 40,000 to 75,000. 
Most Indian artillery units were disbanded, and artillery was 
placed under British control. Under the aegis of the imperial 
"divide and rule" policy, which had its inception at this time, 
the British ensured that a sense of nationality would not be 
allowed to develop among the sepoys. The growth of such feel- 
ings, it was feared, would undermine the prospects of imperial 
control. Accordingly, Indian regiments increasingly were orga- 
nized on a territorial basis; individual companies — and in some 
cases entire regiments — were drawn from the same religious, 
tribal, or caste backgrounds. When companies from several 
regiments were grouped into battalions, considerable efforts 
were made to promote cultural and social distinctions among 
companies of different compositions. 

"Martial Races" Theory 

By the end of the nineteenth century, recruitment was con- 
fined to certain social classes and communities — principally 
those in the northern border areas and Punjab. The narrowing 
recruitment base was a response to the Sepoy Rebellion and 
reflected the needs of prevailing security requirements. The 
bulk of the rebels in the Bengal Army came from the Indo- 
Gangetic Plain while those that had remained loyal were mostly 
from Punjab. 

The experience of the mutiny also gave rise to a pseudo-eth- 
nological construction, the concept of "martial races" in South 
Asia. The popularization of this notion was widely attributed to 
Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Earl of Kandahar, Pretoria, and 
Waterford; Roberts was an Indian-born veteran of the British 
forces that put down the Sepoy Rebellion and the commander 
in chief of the British Indian Army from 1885 to 1893. Roberts 
believed that the most martial races were located in northwest- 
ern India. He regarded Bengalis, Marathas, and southern eth- 
nic groups as lacking in martial virtues. Their warlike 
propensities, he contended, had dissipated because of the ease 
of living and the hot, enervating climate of these regions. 



566 



National Security 



Roberts's views profoundly influenced the composition of 
the British Indian army in the last decades of the nineteenth 
century. For example, when the Bengal Army was reestablished 
in 1885, its new units were drawn from Punjab. In 1892 army 
policy was changed significantly. Units were no longer raised 
on a territorial basis but along what was referred to as "class" 
lines. In effect, regiments admitted only those having similar 
ethnic, religious, or caste backgrounds. Between 1892 and 
1914, recruitment was confined almost entirely to the martial 
races. These modes of recruitment and organization created a 
professional force profoundly shaped by caste and regional fac- 
tors and loyal and responsive to British command. The proce- 
dures also perpetuated regional and communal ties and 
produced an army that was not nationally based. 

Administrative Reform and World War I 

Administrative reforms in 1895 abolished the presidency 
armies, and command was centralized under the aegis of a sin- 
gle army headquarters at Delhi. In the early twentieth century, 
the process of centralization continued; and during this 
period, the separation between military and civilian spheres of 
influence and the ultimate primacy of civilian authority gained 
final acceptance in both civilian and military circles. 

During World War I, India's contribution of troops, money, 
and supplies to the Allied cause was substantial. More than 1 
million Indian soldiers were sent abroad, and more than 
100,000 were either killed or wounded. 

The mobilization for the war effort revealed a number of 
shortcomings in the military establishment. Officer casualties 
had a particularly pernicious effect on military formations 
because only the British officers assigned to a battalion had the 
authority and standing to exercise overall command. In addi- 
tion, Indian officers from one company could rarely be trans- 
ferred to another having a different ethnic, religious, or caste 
makeup. As a consequence, after the war most battalions were 
reorganized to ease reinforcement among component compa- 
nies. Strong pressure from the Indian public also drove the 
British to begin training a small complement of Indians for 
commissions as a first step in the Indianization of the officer 
corps. The Royal Indian Air Force was established in 1932, and 
a small Indian marine unit was reorganized into the Royal 
Indian Navy in 1934. Indian artillery batteries were first formed 
only in 1936. Although the practice of limiting recruitment to 



567 



India: A Country Study 

the martial races had proved inadequate during World War I 
and entry had been opened to "nonmartial" groups, the tradi- 
tional recruitment emphasis on martial races was nonetheless 
resumed after demobilization. 

World WarU 

The political situation in India underwent a fundamental 
transformation at the time of Britain's entry into World War II 
(see Political Impasse and Independence, ch. 1). The viceroy 
and governor general of India, Victor Alexander John Hope, 
Marquis of Linlithgow, without consulting Indian political lead- 
ers, declared India to be at war with Germany on September 3, 
1939. The legislature sustained the viceregal decree and passed 
the Defence of India Bill without opposition, as the representa- 
tives of the Indian National Congress (the Congress — see Glos- 
sary) boycotted the session. Between 1939 and mid-1945, the 
British Indian Army expanded from about 175,000 to more 
than 2 million troops — entirely through voluntary enlistment. 
The incipient naval and air forces were also expanded, and the 
Indian officer corps grew from 600 to more than 14,000. 
Indian troops were deployed under overall British command in 
Africa, Italy, the Middle East, and particularly in Burma and 
Southeast Asia. The great expansion in strength, the overseas 
service of Indian forces, and the demonstrated soldierly ability 
of Indians from all groups did much to dispel the martial races 
theory. 

In Asia the Japanese sought to exploit Indian nationalism 
and anti-British sentiment by forming and supporting the 
Indian National Army (INA — Azad Hind Fauj), which was com- 
posed primarily of 25,000 of the 60,000 Indian troops who had 
surrendered to the Japanese in Singapore in February 1942. 
The army was led by Subhas Chandra Bose, a former militant 
president of the Congress, who also appointed himself head of 
the Provisional Government of Azad India (Free India). An 
unusual feature of the INA was an all-woman, intercaste regi- 
ment composed of some 1,500 Indian women from Burma, 
Malaya, and Singapore. Both the women and the 25,000-strong 
male contingent were organized to fight alongside the Japa- 
nese in Burma, but they actually saw little action. Only 8,000 
were sent to the front. Japanese and INA troops invaded 
Manipur in March 1944 and fought and were defeated in bat- 
tles at Imphal and Kohima (see fig. 1). By May 1945, the INA 
had disintegrated because of acute logistical problems, defec- 



568 



National Security 



tions, and superior British-led forces. It is widely held that Bose 
was killed in an air crash in Taiwan as he fled at the end of the 
war. The British court martialed three INA officers. Nationalist- 
minded lawyers, including Nehru, defended them as national 
heroes, and the British, feeling intense public pressure, found 
them guilty but cashiered them without any further punish- 
ment. However, after independence Nehru refused to reinstate 
them into the Indian armed forces, fearing that they might sow 
discord among the ranks. 

Postindependence Developments 

The National Forces 

Following independence in 1947, important organizational 
changes strengthened civilian control over the military. The 
position of commander in chief was abolished in 1955, and the 
three service chiefs were placed on an equal footing beneath 
the civilian Ministry of Defence. These changes significantly 
reduced the influence of the numerically superior army, to 
which the other services had been subordinate, and limited the 
service chiefs to advisory roles in the defense decision-making 
process. The changes reflected the ambiguous feelings of the 
civilian leadership toward the military. Nehru and other Indian 
nationalists saw the military as an institution strongly wedded 
to the colonial past. The heritage of nonviolence (ahimsa) of 
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also was important to the 
national political leadership (see Mahatma Gandhi, ch. 1). 

Independence and the partition from Pakistan imposed sig- 
nificant costs on the Indian defense establishment that took 
years to redress. The partition of the country had entailed the 
division of the armed forces personnel and equipment. Pre- 
dominantly Muslim units went to Pakistan, followed later by 
individual transfers. Close to two-thirds of all army personnel 
went to India. As a secular state, India accepted all armed 
forces personnel without regard to religious affiliation. The 
division of the navy was based on an estimation of each nation's 
maritime needs. A combination of religious affiliation and mil- 
itary need was applied to the small air force. As a result of parti- 
tion, India also received about two-thirds of the materiel and 
stores. This aspect of the division of assets was complicated by 
the fact that all sixteen ordnance factories were located in 
India. India was allowed to retain them with the proviso that it 



569 



India: A Country Study 

would make a lump sum payment to Pakistan to enable it to 
develop its own defense production infrastructure. 

Independence also resulted in a dramatic reduction of the 
number of experienced senior personnel available. In 1947 
only six Indians had held brigade-level commands, and only 
one had commanded a division. British officers, out of neces- 
sity, were retained for varying periods of time after indepen- 
dence. British chiefs stayed on the longest in the navy and the 
air force. The navy had a British service chief until 1962 and 
the air force until 1954. The armed forces also integrated qual- 
ified members of the armies of the former princely states that 
acceded to India (see National Integration, ch. 1). The term 
sepoy, made popular during the colonial era, was dropped 
about this time, and the word jaw an (Hindi for able-bodied 
man) has been used ever since when referring to the Indian 
soldier. 

The Experience of Wars 
Pakistan 

The first test for the Indian armed forces came shortly after 
independence with the first In do-Pakistani conflict (1947-48). 
The military was called upon to defend the borders of the state 
of Jammu and Kashmir when tribals — principally Pathans — 
attacked from the northwest reaches of Kashmir on October 
22, 1947. India's 161st Infantry Brigade was deployed and 
thwarted the advance of the tribal forces. In early November 
1947, the 161st counterattacked and successfully broke 
through the enemy defenses. Despite early successes, the 
Indian army suffered a setback in December because of logisti- 
cal problems. The problems enabled the forces of Azad Kash- 
mir (Free Kashmir, as the part of Kashmir under Pakistani 
control is called) to take the initiative and force the Indian 
troops to retreat from the border areas. In the spring of 1948, 
the Indian side mounted another offensive to retake some of 
the ground that it had lost. No doubt fearing that the war 
might move into Pakistan proper, regular units of the Pakistani 
army became more actively involved. As the conflict escalated, 
the Indian leadership was quick to recognize that the war could 
not be brought to a close unless Pakistani support for the Azad 
Kashmir forces could be stopped. Accordingly, on the advice of 
Governor General Earl Louis Mountbatten (Britain's last vice- 
roy in India in 1947 and governor general of India, 1947-48), 



570 



National Security 



the Indian government sought United Nations (UN) media- 
tion of the conflict on December 31, 1947. There was some 
opposition to this move within the cabinet by those who did 
not agree with referring the Kashmir dispute to the UN. The 
UN mediation process brought the war to a close on January 1, 
1949. In all, 1,500 soldiers died on each side during the war. 

The second Indo-Pakistani conflict (1965) was also fought 
over Kashmir and started without a formal declaration of war. 
It is widely accepted that the war began with the infiltration of 
Pakistani-controlled guerrillas into Indian Kashmir on about 
August 5, 1965. Skirmishes with Indian forces started as early as 
August 6 or 7, and the first major engagement between the reg- 
ular armed forces of the two sides took place on August 14. 
The next day, Indian forces scored a major victory after a pro- 
longed artillery barrage and captured three important moun- 
tain positions in the northern sector. Later in the month, the 
Pakistanis counterattacked, moving concentrations near Tith- 
wal, Uri, and Punch. Their move, in turn, provoked a powerful 
Indian thrust into Azad Kashmir. Other Indian forces captured 
a number of strategic mountain positions and eventually took 
the key Haji Pir Pass, eight kilometers inside Pakistani territory. 

The Indian gains led to a major Pakistani counterattack on 
September 1 in the southern sector, in Punjab, where Indian 
forces were caught unprepared and suffered heavy losses. The 
sheer strength of the Pakistani thrust, which was spearheaded 
by seventy tanks and two infantry brigades, led Indian com- 
manders to call in air support. Pakistan retaliated on Septem- 
ber 2 with its own air strikes in both Kashmir and Punjab. The 
war was at the point of stalemate when the UN Security Council 
unanimously passed a resolution on September 20 that called 
for a cease-fire. New Delhi accepted the cease-fire resolution 
on September 21 and Islamabad on September 22, and the war 
ended on September 23. The Indian side lost 3,000 while the 
Pakistani side suffered 3,800 battlefield deaths. The Soviet-bro- 
kered Tashkent Declaration was signed on January 10, 1966. It 
required that both sides withdraw by February 26, 1966, to 
positions held prior to August 5, 1965, and observe the cease- 
fire line agreed to on June 30, 1965. 

The origins of the third Indo-Pakistani conflict (1971) were 
different from the previous conflicts. The Pakistani failure to 
accommodate demands for autonomy in East Pakistan in 1970 
led to secessionist demands in 1971 (see The Rise of Indira 
Gandhi, ch. 1). In March 1971, Pakistan's armed forces 



571 



India: A Country Study 

launched a fierce campaign to suppress the resistance move- 
ment that had emerged but encountered unexpected mass 
defections among East Pakistani soldiers and police. The Paki- 
stani forces regrouped and reasserted their authority over most 
of East Pakistan by May. 

As a result of these military actions, thousands of East Paki- 
stanis died at the hands of the Pakistani army. Resistance fight- 
ers and nearly 10 million refugees fled to sanctuary in West 
Bengal, the adjacent Indian state. By midsummer, the Indian 
leadership, in the absence of a political solution to the East 
Pakistan crisis, had fashioned a strategy designed to assist the 
establishment of the independent nation of Bangladesh. As 
part of this strategy, in August 1971, India signed a twenty-year 
Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the Soviet 
Union. One of the treaty's clauses implied that each nation was 
expected to come to the assistance of the other in the event of 
a threat to national security such as that occurring in the 1965 
war with Pakistan. Simultaneously, India organized, trained, 
and provided sanctuary to the Mukti Bahini (meaning Libera- 
tion Force in Bengali), the East Pakistani armed resistance 
fighters. 

Unable to deter India's activities in the eastern sector, on 
December 3, 1971, Pakistan launched an air attack in the west- 
ern sector on a number of Indian airfields, including Ambala 
in Haryana, Amritsar in Punjab, and Udhampur in Jammu and 
Kashmir. The attacks did not succeed in inflicting substantial 
damage. The Indian air force retaliated the next day and 
quickly achieved air superiority. On the ground, the strategy in 
the eastern sector marked a significant departure from previ- 
ous Indian battle plans and tactics, which had emphasized set- 
piece battles and slow advances. The strategy adopted was a 
swift, three-pronged assault of nine infantry divisions with 
attached armored units and close air support that rapidly con- 
verged on Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan. Lieutenant 
General Sagat Singh, who commanded the eighth, twenty- 
third, and fifty-seventh divisions, led the Indian thrust into East 
Pakistan. As these forces attacked Pakistani formations, the 
Indian air force rapidly destroyed the small air contingent in 
East Pakistan and put the Dhaka airfield out of commission. In 
the meantime, the Indian navy effectively blockaded East Paki- 
stan. Dhaka fell to combined Indian and Mukti Bahini forces 
on December 16, bringing a quick end to the war. 



572 



Indian infantry during the 
1962 border war with China 
Courtesy U.S. News and World 
Report Collection, Library of 
Congress 




Action in the western sector was divided into four segments, 
from the cease-fire line in Jammu and Kashmir to the marshes 
of the Rann of Kutch in northwestern Gujarat. On the evening 
of December 3, the Pakistani army launched ground opera- 
tions in Kashmir and Punjab. It also started an armored opera- 
tion in Rajasthan. In Kashmir, the operations were 
concentrated on two key points, Punch and Chhamb. The 
Chhamb area witnessed a particularly intense battle where the 
Pakistanis forced the Indians to withdraw from their positions. 
In other parts of Kashmir, the Indians made some small gains 
along the cease-fire line. The major Indian counteroffensive 
came in the Sialkot-Shakargarh area south and west of 
Chhamb. There, two Pakistani tank regiments, equipped with 
United States-made Patton tanks, confronted the Indian First 
Armored Corps, which had British Centurion tanks. In what 
proved to be the largest tank battle of the war, both sides suf- 
fered considerable casualties. 

Though the Indian conduct of the land war on the western 
front was somewhat timid, the role of the Indian air force was 
both extensive and daring. During the fourteen-day war, the air 
force's Western Command conducted some 4,000 sorties. 
There was little retaliation by Pakistan's air force, partly 
because of the paucity of non-Bengali technical personnel. 



573 



India: A Country Study 



Additionally, this lack of retaliation reflected the deliberate 
decision of the Pakistan Air Force headquarters to conserve its 
forces because of heavy losses incurred in the early days of the 
war. 

China 

The Chinese have two major claims on what India deems its 
own territory. One claim, in the western sector, is on Aksai 
Chin in the northeastern section of Ladakh District injammu 
and Kashmir. The other claim is in the eastern sector over a 
region included in the British-designated North-East Frontier 
Agency, the disputed part of which India renamed Arunachal 
Pradesh and made a state. In the fight over these areas, the 
well-trained and well-armed troops of the Chinese People's Lib- 
eration Army overpowered the ill-equipped Indian troops, who 
had not been properly acclimatized to fighting at high alti- 
tudes. 

Unable to reach political accommodation on disputed terri- 
tory along the 3,225-kilometer-long Himalayan border, the Chi- 
nese attacked India on October 20, 1962. At the time, nine 
divisions from the eastern and western commands were 
deployed along the Himalayan border with China. None of 
these divisions was up to its full troop strength, and all were 
short of artillery, tanks, equipment, and even adequate articles 
of clothing. 

In Ladakh the Chinese attacked south of the Karakoram Pass 
at the northwest end of the Aksai Chin Plateau and in the 
Pangong Lake area about 160 kilometers to the southeast. The 
defending Indian forces were easily ejected from their posts in 
the area of the Karakoram Pass and from most posts near 
Pangong Lake. However, they put up spirited resistance at the 
key posts of Daulat Beg Oldi (near the entrance to the pass) 
and Chushul (located immediately south of Pangong Lake and 
at the head of the vital supply road to Leh, a major town and 
location of an air force base in Ladakh). Other Chinese forces 
attacked near Demchok (about 160 kilometers southeast of 
Chusul) and rapidly overran the Demchok and the Jara La 
posts. 

In the eastern sector, in Assam, the Chinese forces advanced 
easily despite Indian efforts at resistance. On the first day of the 
fighting, Indian forces stationed at the Tsang Le post on the 
northern side of the Namka Chu, the Khinzemane post, and 
near Dhola were overrun. On the western side of the North- 



574 



National Security 



East Frontier Agency, Tsang Dar fell on October 22, Bum La on 
October 23, and Tawang, the headquarters of the Seventh 
Infantry Brigade, on October 24. The Chinese made an offer 
to negotiate on October 24. The Indian government promptly 
rejected this offer. 

With a lull in the fighting, the Indian military desperately 
sought to regroup its forces. Specifically, the army attempted to 
strengthen its defensive positions in the North-East Frontier 
Agency and Ladakh and to prepare against possible Chinese 
attacks through Sikkim and Bhutan. Army units were moved 
from Calcutta, Bihar, Nagaland, and Punjab to guard the 
northern frontiers of West Bengal and Assam. Three brigades 
were hastily positioned in the western part of the North-East 
Frontier Agency, and two other brigades were moved into Sik- 
kim and near the West Bengal border with Bhutan to face the 
Chinese. Light Stuart tanks were drawn from the Eastern Com- 
mand headquarters at Calcutta to bolster these deployments. 

In the western sector, a divisional organization was estab- 
lished in Leh; several battalions of infantry, a battery of twenty- 
five-pounder guns, and two troops of AMX light tanks were air- 
lifted into the Chushul area from Punjab. On November 4, the 
Indian military decided that the post at Daulat Beg Oldi was 
untenable, and its defenders were withdrawn over the 5,300- 
meter-high Sasar Brangsa Pass to a more defensible position. 

The reinforcements and redeployments in Ladakh proved 
sufficient to defend the Chushul perimeter despite repeated 
Chinese attacks. However, the more remote posts at Rezang La 
and Gurung Hill and the four posts at Spanggur Lake area fell 
to the Chinese. 

In the North-East Frontier Agency, the situation proved to be 
quite different. Indian forces counterattacked on November 13 
and captured a hill northwest of the town of Walong. Con- 
certed Chinese attacks dislodged them from this hard-won 
position, and the nearby garrison had to retreat down the 
Lohit Valley. 

In another important section of the eastern sector, the 
Kameng Frontier Division, six Chinese brigades attacked across 
the Tawang Chu near Jang and advanced some sixteen kilome- 
ters to the southeast to attack Indian positions at Nurang, near 
Se La, on November 17. Despite the Indian attempt to regroup 
their forces at Se La, the Chinese continued their onslaught, 
wiping out virtually all Indian resistance in Kameng. By Novem- 
ber 18, the Chinese had penetrated close to the outskirts of 



575 



India: A Country Study 

Tezpur, Assam, a major frontier town nearly fifty kilometers 
from the Assam-North-East Frontier Agency border. 

The Chinese did not advance farther and on November 21 
declared a unilateral cease-fire. They had accomplished all of 
their territorial objectives, and any attempt to press farther into 
the plains of Assam would have stretched their logistical capa- 
bilities and their lines of communication to a breaking point. 
By the time the fighting stopped, each side had lost 500 troops. 

The fighting war was over, but a new diplomatic war had 
begun. After more than thirty years of border tension and stale- 
mate, high-level bilateral talks were held in New Delhi starting 
in February 1994 to foster "confidence-building measures" 
between the defense forces of India and China, and a new 
period of better relations began (see China, ch. 9). 

Peacekeeping Operations 

In addition to the experience gained in wars with Pakistan 
and China, the Indian army has been involved in two regional 
peacekeeping operations. The first was in Sri Lanka from 1987 
to 1990, the second in Maldives in 1988. In addition, Indian 
forces have participated in ten UN peacekeeping forces. 

Sri Lanka 

Since the early 1970s, ethnic conflict has pitted Sri Lanka's 
Tamil minority against the Sinhalese majority over issues of 
power sharing and local autonomy. The main combatants are 
the Sri Lankan army and the secessionist Liberation Tigers of 
Tamil Eelam. Indian involvement, encouraged by pro-Tamil 
sentiments in its state of Tamil Nadu, which is close to Sri 
Lanka, and the Indian government's covert aid to and training 
of Tamil militants between 1977 and 1987, drew India into the 
conflict. The Indo-Sri Lankan Accord, signed on July 29, 1987, 
committed New Delhi to deploying a peacekeeping force on 
the island, making the Indian government the principal guar- 
antor of a solution to the ethnic violence that had heightened 
dramatically since 1983. Nearly 60,000 Indian troops drawn 
from two divisions (one from the Central Command and the 
other from the Southern Command) were in Sri Lanka as the 
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) between 1987 and 1990. 

Originally sent to Sri Lanka as a neutral body with a mission 
to ensure compliance with the accord, the IPKF increasingly 
became a partisan force fighting against Tamils. The popularity 
of Indian forces, which was never high, decreased still further 



576 



National Security 



amidst charges of rape and murder of civilians. Despite the 
considerable experience that Indian troops had gained in 
fighting insurgencies in India's northeast, the IPKF was at a 
marked disadvantage in Sri Lanka. In fighting Naga and Mizo 
guerrillas in northeast India, the army had fought on home 
ground, and the central government could couple the army's 
efforts with direct political negotiations. In Sri Lanka, the 
Indian forces did not possess an adequate local intelligence 
network. Despite the growth of the IPKF to 70,000 strong, the 
predominantly urban context of northern Sri Lanka imposed 
constraints on the use of force. It also is widely believed that Sri 
Lankan forces offered only grudging cooperation. Given the 
inability of the IPKF to prevent either Sinhalese or Tamil 
extremist actions, it steadily lost the support of both sides in 
the conflict. 

As the Sri Lankan presidential elections approached in 
December 1988, both the contending parties, the ruling 
United National Party led by then Prime Minister Ranasinghe 
Premadasa, and the three-party United Front led by former 
Prime Minister Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike, 
expressed their reservations about the 1987 accord. Premadasa 
was elected, and after he was inaugurated, he declared an end 
to the five-and-a-half-year state of emergency and asked India 
to withdraw the IPKF. In July 1989, the IPKF started a phased 
withdrawal of its remaining 45,000 troops, a process that took 
until March 1990 to complete. 

During the three-year involvement, some 1,500 Indian 
troops were killed and more than 4,500 were wounded during 
this operation. Another casualty resulting from the Sri Lanka 
mission was the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv 
Gandhi by a Tamil militant in 1991. As a participant in what 
began as a peacekeeping mission, the Indian armed forces 
learned some valuable lessons. These included the realization 
that better coordination is needed between military and politi- 
cal decision makers for such missions. One of the commanders 
of the IPKF also noted that training, equipment, and command 
and control needed improvement. 

In 1995, at the request of the Sri Lankan government, 
Indian naval ships and air force surveillance aircraft estab- 
lished a quarantine zone around the LTTE stronghold in the 
Jaffna area. The supply of military materiel by Indian sympa- 
thizers to the Tamil insurgents in Sri Lanka from Tamil Nadu, 



577 



India: A Country Study 



just thirty-five kilometers across the Palk Strait, was an ongoing 
problem that continued to keep India involved in the conflict. 

Maldives 

In 1988, the Indian Army experienced a small success in 
squashing an attempted coup in Maldives, 600 kilometers 
south of India in the Indian Ocean. Maldivian minister of for- 
eign affairs Fathullah Jameel had called Rajiv Gandhi (India's 
prime minister from 1984 to 1989) at 5:30 a.m. on November 
3, 1988 to request India's assistance. By 9:00 a.m. the same 
morning, India's Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs had 
been convened. At noon the same day, the committee gave its 
approval for military support to the regime of President Mau- 
moon Abdul Gayoom. Later in the day, the first Indian troops 
were airlifted from a military base at Agra, Uttar Pradesh. Some 
1,600 Indian troops were dispatched within hours. During the 
next three days, the mercenaries involved in the attempted 
coup were rounded up by Indian troops who had parachuted 
in. The Indian navy also effectively blocked maritime escape 
routes the coup leaders might have taken. The operation was 
completed by November 6. 

Three important inferences can be made from this success- 
ful attempt at force projection. First, it demonstrated that suffi- 
cient interservice cooperation existed to allow the armed 
forces to respond rapidly to political directives. Second, it 
showed the capability of the armed forces to airlift troops 
regionally at short notice. And third, it demonstrated the will- 
ingness of the Indian political leadership to use its military 
strength in the region to support a friendly regime. 

United Nations Peacekeeping Forces 

Indian armed forces personnel have been involved in a vari- 
ety of UN-sponsored peacekeeping missions and military 
observer operations, giving them invaluable experience in 
interacting with the armed forces of other nations. In addition, 
although it was not a peacekeeping force per se, an Indian air- 
borne field ambulance unit participated in the Korean War 
(1950-53). 

Indian infantry, supply, transportation, and signal units 
served between 1956 and 1967 with the First United Nations 
Emergency Force in the Suez Canal, Sinai Peninsula, and Gaza. 
From 1960 to 1964, Indian infantry, aircraft, and medical per- 
sonnel, and air dispatch, signal, supply, and postal units served 



578 



National Security 



in the Congo (as Zaire was then named). Indian military 
observers participated in UN observation groups in Lebanon 
in 1958; Yemen in 1963-64 (where India supplied one of the 
chiefs of staff); West Irian (which later became Indonesia's 
Irian Barat Province) in 1962-63; the Iran-Iraq border in 1988- 
91; Angola in 1989-91; and Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, 
Honduras, and Nicaragua in 1989-92. Military observers, 
police monitors, and election supervisors were sent to Namibia 
in 1989 and 1990 to help oversee elections. 

In the 1990s, more military observers were sent abroad. 
There was a second observers' mission to Angola (1991-92) as 
well as missions to El Salvador (starting in 1991), former Yugo- 
slavia (starting in 1992), and Mozambique (starting in 1992). 
The last was a force of more than 900 administrative, engineer- 
ing, and logistic personnel. A sappers' contingent charged with 
clearing landmines and related construction projects partici- 
pated in the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambo- 
dia in 1992-93. An infantry brigade — including army 
physicians, nurses, veterinarians, a tank sqaudron, a mecha- 
nized battalion, a 120-millimeter mortar battery, an engineer 
company, and two flights of helicopters — and an air force heli- 
copter detachment, a force totalling nearly 5,000 personnel, 
were sent to Somalia in 1993-94 to participate in peacekeeping 
and humanitarian relief efforts. 

In an effort to achieve some joint operational understanding 
with other nations' forces, India has also cooperated in various 
peacetime joint exercises with Indian Ocean nations and with 
the United States. In 1992, India and the United States con- 
ducted joint naval exercises in the Arabian Sea near Kochi 
(Cochin), and in 1994 Indian marine commandos and United 
States Marines conducted joint exercises with little fanfare. 

National Security Structure 

Civil-Military Relations 

The pattern of civil-military relations prevailing in India was 
created by the staff of Lord Mountbatten as a three-tier system 
extending from the prime minister to the three service chiefs. 
At the apex of this structure is the Political Affairs Committee 
of the Cabinet. The second level is the Defence Minister's Com- 
mittee of the Cabinet, and the third level is the Chiefs of Staff 
Committee. Other committees, such as the Joint Intelligence 
Committee, the Defence Science Advisory Committee, and the 



579 



India: A Country Study 



Joint Planning Committee, assist the higher committees. There 
were proposals in the mid-1990s to establish a joint defense 
staff for better integration of interservice resources, programs, 
policies, and operations (see fig. 16). 

In the immediate postindependence period, the Defence 
Minister's Committee of the Cabinet did not play an active role 
in policy formulation. The higher organization of defense was 
vested largely with the minister of defence. From 1957 to 1962, 
this position was held by V.K. Krishna Menon, whose authority 
far exceeded that usually accorded a minister of defence. A 
confidante of Nehru's through much of the late preindepen- 
dence period, Menon functioned as Nehru's alter ego for 
national security and defense planning. Consequently, the 
locus of decision making shifted from the cabinet to the 
Defence Minister's Committee. Menon was in many ways 
responsible for laying the foundations of India's military-indus- 
trial base. 

Among other endeavors, Menon was responsible for the 
development of ordnance facilities to manufacture the 
Ichapore semiautomatic rifle; a tank manufacturing complex 
at Avadi. Tamil Nadu: facilities to build frigates at the Mazagon 
Dock naval shipyard in Bombay; and the licensed manufacture 
of Soviet-designed MiG— 23 fighter aircraft in Nasik. Maharash- 
tra. However, his highly idiosyncratic manners, his high- 
handed ways, and his involvement in the tactical aspects of mil- 
itary decision making had negative consequences. For exam- 
ple, he quarrelled with the professional military, particularly 
India's third chief of armv staff, General K.S. Thimayya, over 
Thimayya's attempt to warn Menon and Nehru about the 
emerging Chinese threat as early as 1959. When Thimayya 
resigned in protest, Nehru prevailed upon him to withdraw his 
resignation. Unfortunately, when questioned in the Lok Sabha 
(House of the People) , the lower house of the Parliament, 
about Thimawa's resignation, Nehru offered a rather weak 
defense of the general's actions and sought to deflect the criti- 
cisms of his minister of defence (see The Legislature, ch. 8). 
When Thimayya retired as chief of army staff in May 1961, 
Menon passed over Thimawa's designated successor, Lieuten- 
ant General S.P.P. Thorat, and instead appointed a junior offi- 
cer, Lieutenant General P.N. Thapar. The appointment not 
only created a rift between the professional military and politi- 
cal leadership but also alienated a number of high-ranking offi- 
cials in the Ministry of Defence. Menon's actions also 



580 



National Security 



demoralized competent personnel in the Chilian and military 
bureaucracies, which led to important gaps in defense pre- 
paredness and planning. Menon's dominance of the defense 
planning process significantly contributed to the military deba- 
cle of 1962. 

The Indian defeat led to the establishment of a new Emer- 
gency Committee of the Cabinet. This committee introduced a 
system of "morning meetings" with the minister of defence and 
the three service chiefs. The morning meetings, which are con- 
ducted without a predetermined agenda, deal with current 
defense issues on a regular basis. The meetings are also 
attended by the cabinet secretary, the defence secretary, and 
the scientific adviser to the minister of defence. These morning 
meetings continue to take place. 

In the Chiefs of Staff Committee, formal equality prevails 
among the three service chiefs despite the fact that the army 
remains the largest of the three branches of the armed ser- 
vices. This formal equality among the three services came 
about with independence. 

To facilitate defense planning, the government established 
two organizations: the Defence Coordination and Implementa- 
tion Committee and the Defence Planning Staff. The Defense 
Coordination and Implementation Committee is chaired by 
the defence secretary and meets on an ad hoc basis. Its mem- 
bership includes the three service chiefs, representatives from 
civilian and military intelligence organizations, and the secre- 
tary of defence production. The Defence Planning Staff, a per- 
manent body, was established in 1986. Composed of officers 
drawn from all three services, it is responsible for developing 
overall national security strategy. It is also charged with briefing 
the Chiefs of Staff Committee on long-term threats to national 
security. 

Defense Spending 

Until 1962 defense spending was deliberately limited. In the 
wake of the war with China, defense spending rose from 2.1 
percent of the gross national product (GXP — see Glossary) in 
fiscal year (FY — see Glossary) 1962 to 4.5 percent in FY 1964. In 
FY 1994, defense spending was slightly less than 5 percent of 
gross domestic product (GDP — see Glossary). In terms of dol- 
lars, FY 1994 total defense services expenditures were projected 
at USS7.2 billion (but are likely to have been close to USS7.8 
billion). Proportionately, based on figures provided by the gov- 



581 



India: A Country Study 



LU 
_l LU 

H 
= 8 

LU S 
5 = 

§s 

O LU 

? o 

IT LI 

CL LL 

o 





LU 




LU 








^1 




Q. 5 




3 O 




Cfl O 




_J CD 




< 3 




Q. Cfl 




o Cfl 




z QC 




PRi 
ICE 




LL 




or 
us- 



LU 

t x 

I < 

Shi 

O LU O 

oz - 

W CO LU 

E < H 

< u cn 

-I LL LU 

<os 

t CL 

o 

CL 





H 




LU 




2 


Cfl 


m 


DC 


< 


UJ 

H 


a 


Cfl 


lu 


z 


HJ 


m 


LL 


LU 





u 


UJ 


z 


LU 


LU 


H 


LL 


H 


DE 


1 
1 









U 



i— 








LU 

_l o 


ETARIA 




GENCE 
EE 




FE GENERA 
NTELLIGEN 


INET SECR 










NT INTE 
COMM 




CTORA 
ITARY 1 


CAB 




JOI 




DIREi 
OF MIL 













§i 




*8 




LU « 




o > 




z £ 




LU O 




LL 00 




LU 5 



Cfl LU 

QC Q LU 

LU Z 1- 

I- < t 
2zS 

z o s 

s R 

Lu O a- 

LL CC CL 

LU CL 3 

Q Cfl 



LU 
Cfl LU 

= t 

z o 



o < °- 

Z _j Z 

LU _l O 

LL LU 

LU Q. 

Q CL 



O Z 

f= 2 
< i- 

2 < LU 
Q 7 Hi 

g|E 
8si 

lu E o 
o s o 

z ~ 

LU C3 
LL Z 
LU < 
□ 



UJ 



cn 5 

LL O 
LU 2 
X 

u 



o cfl 





- 


LL 


2 


FENC 


OPME 


LLI 








LL 


LU 





Q 


:nt 




i 


< 


- 


X 




o 


< 


L= 


QL 




UJ 


LU 


□ 


[fl 











1-2 

LU CL 

S CL 

LU 3 

Q Cfl 

LL O 

25 

z z 

lu g 

II 

si 















Z 











z 


z 











> 






_J 


O 




0l 






dl 


□ 




3 


o 




Cfl 


DC 






dl 







o o 

O 3 



S LL. 

5 o 



o 

CC 

o 

LL 
> 
X 

< 

LU Cfl I- 
O HI j 
X > 5 

s_ o x s 

> > U. LU < 

S > _ Cfl X 

X < E LU < 

< Z < X CL 



582 



National Security 



eminent, 48.4 percent of expenditures were for the army, 15.7 
percent for the air force, 5.9 percent for the navy, and 30 per- 
cent for capital outlays for defense services and defense ord- 
nance factories. The latter provide materiel to the armed 
forces through some thirty-nine ordnance factories and eight 
public-sector enterprises that build ships, aircraft, and major 
defense items. The defense budget for FY 1994 was 6.5 percent 
higher than the revised estimate for FY 1993. The allocation 
increased to 14.9 percent of the total central government bud- 
get, up from 13 percent in the previous two fiscal years. 
Nuclear energy and space research are not fully accounted for 
in the defense budget, but most paramilitary forces fall within 
the purview of the Ministry of Defence. 

Organization and Equipment of the Armed Forces 
The Army 

In 1994 the army had approximately 940,000 men and 
women in its ranks and more than 36,000 in reserve forces. 
The army is headquartered in New Delhi and is under the 
direction of the chief of the army staff, always a full general. 
The chief of the army staff is assisted by a vice chief, two deputy 
chiefs, a military secretary, and the heads of four main staff 
divisions: the adjutant general, the quartermaster general, the 
master general of ordnance, and the engineer in chief. 

The army has five tactical area commands: the Northern 
Command headquartered at Udhampur in Jammu and Kash- 
mir, the Western Command headquartered at Chandimandir 
in Chandigarh, the Central Command headquartered at Luck- 
now in Uttar Pradesh, the Eastern Command headquartered at 
Calcutta, and the Southern Command headquartered at Pune 
in Maharashtra (see fig. 17). Each command is headed by a 
lieutenant general. The principal combat formations within 
the scope of these commands are armored divisions and inde- 
pendent armored brigades, infantry divisions, mountain infan- 
try divisions, independent infantry brigades, airborne/ 
commando brigades, and independent artillery brigades (see 
table 34, Appendix). These units are organized in twelve corps- 
level formations. 

The army is equipped with some 3,400 main battle tanks. Of 
these, 1,200 are indigenously manufactured Vijayanta tanks. 
Additionally, the army has some T-55, T-72, and PT-76 tanks. 
The Arjun main battle tank has been under development by 



583 



India: A Country Study 

the Defence Research and Development Organisation 
(DRDO) since 1983, and, in 1995, limited production was 
expected to begin in 1996. 

To complement indigenous production, however, it was 
reported in 1994 that Russia had agreed to help India modern- 
ize its T-72 tanks and to sell and lease other types of weapons. 
It is generally understood that about 70 percent of India's mili- 
tary equipment is of Soviet origin. Some army officials con- 
tinue to favor Russian-made equipment, such as the T-72 tank, 
over Indian adaptations of the same items, such as the T-72 MI 
tank developed by the DRDO. 

The army also has substantial artillery forces. The best esti- 
mate places the army's towed artillery capabilities at more than 
4,000 pieces. In addition to the towed artillery, the army has 
self-propelled artillery. Finally, it has substantial numbers of 
surface-to-air missile capabilities, the total number being more 
than 1,200. In 1986 air observation post units were transferred 
from the air force to the army to form the Army Aviation 
branch. Using nine helicopter squadrons, Army Aviation has 
supported ground units in the Siachen Glacier in Jammu and 
Kashmir and in Sri Lanka, as well as counterinsurgency opera- 
tions in various parts of the country. Army Aviation has also 
participated in disaster relief. 

Apart from its nine squadrons of helicopters, the army has 
eight air observation squadrons and six antitank/ transport 
squadrons. It relies on the air force for air support, lift capabili- 
ties, and air supply (see table 35, Appendix). 

An extensive body of schools and centers supports army 
operations. The officer corps is largely drawn from the 
National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla, Maharashtra, a 
joint services training institution that provides educational 
equivalents to the bachelor of arts or bachelor of science 
degrees to cadets for all three service arms. Cadets spend their 
first three years at the National Defence Academy and then are 
sent to their respective service academies for further training 
before being commissioned in the armed forces. A preparatory 
school, the Rashtriya Indian Military College, at Dehra Dun, 
Uttar Pradesh, provides education to candidates for the 
National Defence Academy. After completing their studies at 
the National Defence Academy, army cadets are sent to the 
Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. Other Indian Military 
Academy cadets are graduates of the Army Cadet College or 
are direct-entry students who have qualified by passing the 



584 



300 Kilometers 



150 



300 Miles 
\ 



AFGHANISTAN ) 



""V 

HERN 
COMMAND 



; NORTHERN Jammu > > , 
and u 

Udhampur Kashmir «^ 




Aksai Chin 

Indian claim 

Chinese tine of control js| 



Himachal " 



PAKISTAN 



% Chandimandir 

WESTERN VVlk Chandigarh V 

COMMAND M x -v 
• Dehra Dun 



\ Pradesh 

X , — f 



A 

CHINA 



^Punjabj-^ 




Daman and Diu 
Dadra and Nagar Haveli 

Bombay 
WESTERN NAVAL 
COMMAND 

Arabian Sea 



LACCADtVE 
ISLANDS 

(India) 



Caccadive Sea 
MALDIVES 



Boundary rep, 
not necessarit 



Figure 17. Area Commands of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, 1995 



586 



International boundary 
International boundary in dispute 
State or union territory boundary 
Army area command boundary 
National capital 
• Populated place 

Army area command headquarters 
vL 1 Naval area command headquarters 
4" Air force operational command headquarters 
JL Triservice area command* 
Reports to Eastern Naval Command headquarters 



ft 



f Arunachal Pradesh^ 

Eastern Air / ( 

Command Assam /Nagaland 

^ Jit i s- Y 

S ^S?)!* 1 J (Manipur 



West^Cafcc 
iengal 



'ay of (Bengal 



ANDAMAN °n 
ISLANDS J* 

• ° "Port Blair 

Andaman 
\ Sea 
Andaman and Nicobar Islands 



1 NICOBAR 
■ ISLANDS °Q 
! (India) 



"esentation 
y authoritative 



National Security 



Union Public Service Commission Examination. They spend 
between twelve and twenty-four months at the Indian Military 
Academy before being commissioned in the army as second 
lieutenants. Still other officer training occurs at the Officers 1 
Training Academy in Madras, Tamil Nadu, where a forty-four- 
week session is offered to university graduates seeking a short- 
service commission. 

In addition to the Indian Military Academy, the army runs a 
number of military education establishments. The more prom- 
inent ones include the College of Combat at Mhow, Madhya 
Pradesh; the High Altitude Warfare School at Gulmarg, Jammu 
and Kashmir; and the Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare 
School at Vairengte, Mizoram. The army also operates the 
Defence Services Staff College at Wellington in the Nilgiri Hills 
in Tamil Nadu, which provides master of science-level joint-ser- 
vice training for mid-level staff appointments and promotes 
interservice cooperation. 

In 1994 it was reported that there were 200 women in the 
armed forces. In the army, which employs women as physicians 
and nurses, the participation of women is small but growing. 
The Indian Military Nursing Service was formed in 1926 and 
has eight nursing schools (five army, two navy, and one air 
force) and one nursing college in Pune. Bachelor of science 
graduates are commissioned as lieutenants in the Medical 
Nursing Service and attached to the various components of the 
armed forces. Ranks as high as colonel can be attained by 
career officers. In the mid-1990s, a small but increasing num- 
ber of women officers were being assigned to nonmedical ser- 
vices. In 1994, there were fifty women nonmedical army 
officers and another twenty-five in training. They are university 
graduates who have been put through rigorous training and 
are reported to be eager for combat unit assignments. 

The Navy 

The origins of the modern Indian navy are traced to a mari- 
time force established by the East India Company in the seven- 
teenth century. This force had a variety of names — the Bombay 
Marine, the Indian Navy, and the Indian Marine. In 1934 the 
Royal Indian Navy was established, with Indians serving prima- 
rily in lower-level positions. After independence the navy was 
the most neglected of the three services because the national 
leadership perceived that the bulk of the threats to India were 
land-based. 



587 




International boundary 
International boundary in dispute 
State or union territory boundary 
Army area command boundary 
National capital 
Populated place 

Army area command headquarters 
Naval area command headquarters 
Air force operational command headquarters 
Triservice area command* 



Reports to Eastern Naval Command headquarter: 



J Arunachal Pradesh^ 



^BHUTAN J^of/ 

i- '"T'Eastern Air . / iftSl 

V -'"2L*- -v . Command Assam /Nagaland 



f' 



^ West/- 1 Cafcutte 
Bengal \ «» 



BURMA 



Say 0/" (Bayed 




ANDAMAN :X 
ISLANDS 







Andaman and Nicobar Islands 



i NICOBAR 
■.ISLANDS °Q 
! (/note) 



Boundary representation 
not necessarily authoritative 



Figure 17. Area Commands of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, 1995 



586 



India: A Country Study 



The first efforts at naval rearmament emerged in the 1964— 
69 Defence Plan, which called for the replacement of India's 
aging fleet and the development of a submarine service. 
Between 1947 and 1964, fiscal constraints had prevented the 
implementation of ambitious plans for naval expansion. Conse- 
quently, many of the vessels were obsolete and of little opera- 
tional value. As part of this expansion program, the British 
helped develop the Mazagon Dock shipyard for the local pro- 
duction of British Leander-class frigates. The Soviets, however, 
were willing to support all phases of the planned naval expan- 
sion. Accordingly, they supplied naval vessels, support systems, 
and training on extremely favorable terms. By the mid-1960s, 
they had replaced Britain as India's principal naval supplier 
(see table 36, Appendix). 

During the 1980s, Indian naval power grew significantly. 
During this period, the naval facilities at Port Blair in the Anda- 
man Islands, in the Nicobar Islands, and in Lakshadweep were 
significantly upgraded and modernized. A new line of Leander- 
class frigates was manufactured at Mazagon Dock in collabora- 
tion with Vickers and Yarrow of Britain. These frigates, redesig- 
nated as the Godavari class, have antisubmarine warfare 
capabilities and can carry two helicopters. During the 1980s, 
plans were also finalized for the licensed manufacture of a line 
of West German Type 1500 submarines (known as the Shishu- 
mar class in India). In addition to these developments at Maza- 
gon Dock, the naval air arm also was upgraded. India 
purchased nearly two squadrons of the vertical and short take- 
off and landing (VSTOL) Sea Harriers to replace an earlier 
generation of Sea Hawks. 

In the mid-1990s, India was preparing for a major modern- 
ization program that was to include completion of three 5,000- 
ton Delhi-class destroyers, the building of three 3,700-ton frig- 
ates based on Italian Indian Naval Ship (INS)-IO design, and 
the acquisition of four hydrographic survey ships. Also to be 
built were an Indian-designed warship called Frigate 2001; six 
British Upholder-class submarines; an Indian-designed and 
Indian-built missile-firing nuclear submarine — the Advanced 
Technology Vessel — based on the Soviet Charlie II class; and an 
Indian-designed and Indian-built 17,000-ton air defense ship 
capable of carrying between twelve and fifteen aircraft. The air- 
defense ship will be, in effect, a replacement for India's two 
aging British aircraft carriers, the INS Vikrant, the keel of which 
was laid in 1943 but construction of which was not completed 



588 



Aircraft on the flight deck of the INS Viraat 
Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 

until 1961 and which was slated for decommissioning by 2000, 
and the INS Viraat, which entered service in 1987 and is likely 
to be decommissioned by 2005. The problems encountered 
with modernizing these and other foreign-source ships led 
India to decide against acquiring an ex-Soviet Kiev-class aircraft 
carrier in 1994. 

In the spirit of international military cooperation, India has 
made moves in the early and mid-1990s to enhance joint- 
nation interoperability. Indian naval exercises have taken place 
with ships from the Russian navy and those of Indian Ocean lit- 
toral states and other nations, including the United States. 

Naval headquarters is located in New Delhi. It is under the 
command of the chief of naval staff — a full admiral. The chief 
of naval staff has four principal staff officers: the vice chief of 
naval staff, the vice chief of personnel, the chief of material, 
and the deputy chief of naval staff. The total strength of the 



589 



India: A Country Study 



navy in 1994 was 54,000, including 5,000 naval aviation person- 
nel and 1,000 marines (one regiment, with a second reportedly 
forming). 

Women were inducted into the navy for the first time in 
1992, when twenty-two were trained as education, logistics, and 
law cadres. In 1993 additional women were recruited for air 
traffic control duties. By 1994 there were thirty-five women 
naval officers. 

The navy is deployed under three area commands, each 
headed by a flag officer. The Western Naval Command is head- 
quartered in Bombay on the Arabian Sea; the Southern Naval 
Command in Kochi (Cochin), in Kerala, also on the Arabian 
Sea; and the Eastern Naval Command in Vishakhapatnam, 
Andhra Pradesh, on the Bay of Bengal. Additionally, the navy 
has important bases in Calcutta and Goa. 

The Southern Naval Command is responsible for naval offi- 
cer training, which occurs at the Indian Naval Academy in Goa. 
Officer candidates are largely drawn from the National 
Defence Academy. After commissioning, officers are offered 
specialized training in antisubmarine warfare, aviation, com- 
munications, electronic warfare, engineering, hydrography, 
maritime warfare, missile warfare, navigation, and other naval 
specialties at various naval training institutions, many of which 
are collocated with the Training Command headquarters on 
Wiilingdon Island, near Kochi. 

The Air Force 

The air force was established in 1932. In 1994 it had 110,000 
personnel and 779 combat aircraft. The air force, which is 
headquartered in New Delhi, is headed by the chief of air staff, 
an air chief marshal. He is assisted by six principal staff officers: 
the vice chief of air staff, the deputy chief of air staff, the air 
officer in charge of administration, the air officer in charge of 
personnel, the air officer in charge of maintenance, and the 
inspector general of flight safety. The air force is deployed into 
five operational commands: the Western Air Command, head- 
quartered at New Delhi; the Southwestern Air Command, 
headquartered at Jodhpur, Rajasthan; the Eastern Air Com- 
mand, headquartered at Shillong, Meghalaya; the Central Air 
Command, headquartered at Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh; and 
the Southern Air Command, headquartered at Thiruvanan- 
thapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala. Additionally, there are two 
functional commands: the Training Command at Bangalore, 



590 



National Security 



Karnataka, and the Maintenance Command at Nagpur, Maha- 
rashtra. 

As of 1994, the air force was equipped with twenty-two squad- 
rons of ground attack fighters. Five of these squadrons had a 
total of eighty-nine British Jaguar aircraft. Another five squad- 
rons had 120 Soviet-origin MiG— 27 aircraft. The air force also 
fielded twenty fighter squadrons, two of which were equipped 
with a total of thirty-five French-built Mirage 2000 H/TH air- 
craft. There were also twelve squadrons of transport aircraft in 
the inventory (see table 37, Appendix). Because of the large 
number of Soviet-origin aircraft, the air force is dependent on 
Russia for spare parts and equipment and weapons upgrades. 
In March 1995, Russia agreed to upgrade India's MiG— 21 air- 
craft. 

Aside from the Training Command at Bangalore, the center 
for primary flight training is located at the Air Force Academy 
at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, followed by operational train- 
ing at various air force schools. Advanced training is also con- 
ducted at the Defence Services Staff College; specialized 
advanced flight training schools are located at Bidar, Karna- 
taka, and Hakimpet, Andhra Pradesh (also the location for 
helicopter training). Technical schools are found at a number 
of other locations. 

In 1991 the government approved the induction of women 
into nontechnical air force officer billets, such as administra- 
tion, logistics, accounting, education, and meteorology. In 
1992 opportunities for "pioneer women officers" were opened 
in the areas of transportation, helicopters, and navigation, and 
the first group of thirteen women cadets entered the Air Force 
Academy. During their flight training, they qualified on HPT- 
32 and Kiran aircraft to earn their air force commissions. After 
completing ten months' training, five of the seven successful 
course graduates received further training on various transport 
aircraft. By 1994, there were fifty-five women officers in the air 
force. 

Recruitment and Training 

Under the Indian constitution, as amended in 1977, each cit- 
izen has a fundamental duty to "defend the country and render 
national service when called upon to do so" (see The Constitu- 
tional Framework, ch. 8). However, the three services have 
always been all-volunteer forces, and general conscription has 
never proved necessary. Military service has long been deemed 



591 



India: A Country Study 

an attractive option for many in a society where employment 
opportunities are scarce. The technical branches of the armed 
forces, however, have experienced problems with recruitment. 
Since the 1980s, as a result of the growth and diversification of 
India's industrial base, employment opportunities for individu- 
als with technical training have expanded substantially. Conse- 
quently, fewer trained individuals have sought employment 
opportunities in the armed services. 

The army and navy maintain a combined recruitment orga- 
nization that operates sixty offices in key cities and towns 
nationwide. The air force has a separate recruiting organiza- 
tion with twelve offices. Army and navy recruitment officers 
tour rural districts adjacent to their stations and also draw from 
nearby urban areas. The air force and the navy draw a dispro- 
portionate number of their recruits from the urban areas, 
where educational opportunities are adequate to generate 
applicants capable of mastering technical skills. The army also 
recruits outside India, admitting ethnic Gurkhas (also seen as 
Gorkhas) from Nepal into a Gurkha regiment. 

Initial enlistments vary in length, depending on the service 
and the branch or skill category, but fifteen years is considered 
the minimum. The tour of duty is generally followed by two to 
five years of service in a reserve unit. Reenlistment is permitted 
for those who are qualified, particularly those possessing neces- 
sary skills. The minimum age for enlistment is seventeen years; 
the maximum varies between twenty and twenty-seven, depend- 
ing on the service and skill category. The compulsory retire- 
ment age for officers also varies, ranging from forty-eight for 
army majors, navy lieutenant commanders, and air force 
squadron leaders and below, to sixty for army generals, navy 
admirals, and air force air chief marshals. On occasion a two- 
year extension is granted on the grounds of exceptional orga- 
nizational needs or personal ability. 

Candidates have to meet minimum physical standards, 
which differ among the three services and accommodate the 
various physical traits of particular ethnic groups. Since 1977 
recruiting officers have relaxed physical standards slightly 
when evaluating the only sons of serving or former military 
personnel — both as a welfare measure and as a means of main- 
taining a family tradition of military service. 

Educational standards for enlisted ranks differ according to 
service and skill category; the army requirement varies from 
basic literacy to higher secondary education (see Primary and 



592 




Women naval officers 
Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 

Secondary Education, ch. 2). The other two services require 
higher educational levels, reflecting their greater need for 
technical expertise. The air force requires at least a higher sec- 
ondary education, and the navy insists on graduation from a 
secondary school for all except cooks and stewards. Officer 
candidates have to complete a higher secondary education and 
pass a competitive qualifying exam for entry into precommis- 
sion training. All services also accept candidates holding uni- 
versity degrees in such fields as engineering, physics, or 
medicine for direct entry into the officer corps. 

Enlistment was legally opened to all Indians following inde- 
pendence in 1947. In 1949 the government abolished recruit- 
ment on an ethnic, linguistic, caste, or religious basis. 
Exceptions were army infantry regiments raised before World 
War II, where cohesion and effectiveness were thought to be 
rooted in long-term attachment to traditions. Some army regi- 



593 



India: A Country Study 

ments have a homogeneous composition; other regiments seg- 
regate groups only at battalion or company levels. Others are 
completely mixed throughout. In general, the army has 
steadily evolved into a more heterogeneous service since 1947. 
Regiments raised during and after World War II have recruited 
Indians of almost all categories, and the doubling of the army's 
size after the 1962 border war with China sped up the process. 
The armed forces have made a concerted effort to recruit 
among underrepresented segments of the population and, 
during the late 1970s and the early 1980s, reformed the recruit- 
ing process to eliminate some of the subjectivity in the candi- 
date selection process. Since 1989 the government has sought 
to apportion recruitment from each state and union territory 
according to its share of the population. Both the air force and 
the navy are now almost completely "mixed" services and dis- 
play considerable heterogeneity in their composition. 

Conditions of Service 

Pay and allowances for armed forces personnel compare 
favorably with civilian employment. Monthly salaries vary 
according to the service, although personnel usually earn simi- 
lar pay for equivalent duties. Additionally, there is an extensive 
and complex system of special allowances that depend on con- 
ditions and kind of service. Free food for personnel in both 
field and garrison areas was extended after 1983 to all person- 
nel up to the rank of colonel. All personnel are entitled to 
annual leaves of varying lengths, and, other than for a few 
exceptions, the services bear transportation costs for personnel 
and their families. Commissioned officers and other desig- 
nated ranks contribute to the Armed Forces Provident Fund, a 
form of life insurance. 

Personnel retiring after twenty years of service as an officer 
or fifteen years of enlisted service receive pensions based on 
the rank held at retirement. Retirees without the minimum ser- 
vice requirement receive special one-time bonuses. Additional 
remuneration accrues to those disabled in the line of service 
or — in the event of the death of active-duty personnel — to their 
surviving dependents. 

The Soldiers', Sailors', and Airmen's Board, chaired by the 
minister of defence, is one of the most important organizations 
dealing with the welfare of active-duty personnel and their 
dependents. The board works closely with the Directorate of 
Resettlement in the Ministry of Defence to assist former service 



594 



National Security 



personnel and their dependents to find employment on their 
return to civilian life. The directorate also operates cooperative 
industrial and agricultural estates and training programs to 
prepare former service personnel for employment in new 
fields. Both central and state-level governments reserve a per- 
centage of vacancies in the public sector for former military 
personnel. 

Uniforms, Ranks, and Insignia 

Indian military uniforms resemble those in the correspond- 
ing British services: olive drab for the army, dark blue for the 
navy, and sky blue for the air force. More uniform variations 
exist in the army than in the other services, with certain army 
regiments preserving traditional accoutrements. Sikhs may 
wear turbans instead of standard military headgear, for exam- 
ple (see Sikhism, ch. 3). 

The rank structure in the three services, especially in the 
commissioned officer ranks, for the most part follows conven- 
tional British practice. The army, however, has the category of 
junior commissioned officer, for which there is no precise 
equivalent in the United States or British services. Junior com- 
missioned officers are promoted on a point system from within 
the enlisted ranks of their regiments, filling most of the junior 
command slots, such as platoon leaders. The senior junior 
commissioned officer usually acts as the principal assistant to 
the commanding officer. 

Rank insignia closely follow the British system. Combina- 
tions of stars, Lion of Sarnath (the national emblem) badges, 
crossed sabers, and crossed batons in a wreath show respective 
army ranks from junior commissioned officer up through field 
marshal. The latter rank has been granted to only two distin- 
guished Indian officers: K.M. Cariappa, a highly decorated vet- 
eran of the 1947-48 war with Pakistan, and S. H.F.J. "Sam" 
Manekshaw, the strategist of the 1971 war with Pakistan. Arm 
chevrons worn with the point down indicate enlisted ranks. 
Naval insignia follow the convention of sleeve stripes for offi- 
cers and fouled anchor badges for enlisted personnel. The air 
force uses broad and narrow sleeve stripe combinations for 
officer ranks and combinations of chevrons, Lion of Sarnath 
badges, and wing symbols for enlisted ranks (see fig. 18; fig. 
19). 



595 



India: A Country Study 



3x 




51 
2% 



<U jO 

nj 

oc u. 
< O £ 

s < 




_j LU 

<luO 

DC I £ 
LU h- O 
Zl " 
luod: 



< -i 
cc u- 



Ell 




LU < 

5| 

EE < 
< s 



on 



Eon 



Z -I 

< < 

Z DC 




Z — I 

< < 

z cr 

LU LU 

H Z 

3 LU 

LU O 



< 

< cc 
< 



LU 



Z — i 

< < 

Z DC 

LU LU 

h- Z 

3 LU 

LU (3 



LU< 
< 



< z 

S LLI 




CC < 

off; 



< z 

2 LU 



cc < 
O cc 

^ LU 

< z 

2 LU 
O 



si 

si 




sag 

< CL 

3 




cc _, 

yj < 

Q CC 



< s 



u 



w < 

Q CC 

< LU 

pp Lu 





o 

DC £ 





Z _J 

< LU 

z z 

LU O 

I- _l 

=> O 

LU o 




Z — I 

< LU 

z z 

LU O 



□I 



Z — I 

< LU 

z z 

LU O 

3 O 

LU O 





O cc 

DC LU 

Q Q 

< < 



□1 



LU < 

SI 




-I 

LU < 

yj o 

- 1 o 







z 
< 

I— z 



05 

2 o 




z 
< 
m z 




H Q 

Z < 

< DC 

Z O 

3 O 

y z 

— ' 3 




cc 

I- LU 

o o 



? co j 

*- => 

o w ! 
< i 




I 8 
< o 



dc d 



596 



National Security 




India: A Country Study 



Paramilitary and Reserve Forces 

Paramilitary Forces 

In addition to the regular armed forces, India also has para- 
military forces. These forces have grown dramatically since 
independence. There are twelve paramilitary organizations, 
which have an authorized strength of around 1.3 million per- 
sonnel. In 1994, their reported actual strength was 692,500. 
These organizations include the Coast Guard Organisation and 
the Defence Security Force, which are subordinate to the Min- 
istry of Defence. Paramilitary forces subordinate to the Minis- 
try of Home Affairs include the Assam Rifles, the Border 
Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, the Cen- 
tral Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, and 
the Rashtriya Rifles (National Rifles). The National Security 
Guards, a joint anti terrorist contingency force, are charged 
with protection of high-level persons (the so-called very very 
important persons — WIPs) and are subordinate to the Office 
of the Prime Minister (also sometimes known as the Prime 
Minister's Secretariat.) The guards are composed of elements 
of the armed forces, the Central Reserve Police Force, and the 
Border Security Force. The Special Frontier Force also is subor- 
dinate to the Office of the Prime Minister. The Railway Protec- 
tion Force is subordinate to the Ministry of Railways. At the 
local level, there is the Provincial Armed Constabulary, which is 
controlled by the governments of the states and territories (see 
State and Other Police Services, this ch.). 

During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, local police forces could 
not deal with the mounting array of sectarian, ethnic, and 
regional conflicts, and paramilitary forces were increasingly 
called on for assistance. In addition to security and guard 
duties, paramilitary organizations assist local and state-level 
police forces in maintaining public order and shield the army 
from excessive use in "aid-to-the-civil-power" operations. These 
operations essentially involve quelling public disorder when 
local police forces prove inadequate to the task. 

The Coast Guard Organisation was constituted as an Armed 
Force of the Union in 1978 under the administrative control of 
the Ministry of Defence (although it is funded by the Ministry 
of Home Affairs), following its 1977 establishment as a tempo- 
rary navy element. Its principal mission is to protect the coun- 
try's maritime assets, particularly India's 200-nautical-mile 
exclusive economic zone and the marine resources contained 



598 



National Security 



in the area, which comprises nearly 2.8 million square kilome- 
ters. The coast guard is also responsible for the prevention of 
poaching and smuggling, the control of marine pollution, and 
carrying out search-and-rescue missions. Under the command 
of a director general, the coast guard is organized into three 
national maritime zones: the Western Maritime Zone, head- 
quartered at Bombay; the Eastern Maritime Zone, headquar- 
tered at Madras; and the Andaman and Nicobar Maritime 
Zone, headquartered at Port Blair. The zones are further subdi- 
vided into district headquarters, one each for the eight mari- 
time states on the mainland and two in the Andaman and 
Nicobar Islands. In times of emergency, the coast guard is 
expected to work with the navy. In the late 1980s, coast guard 
units from the eastern zone supported Indian peacekeeping 
efforts in Sri Lanka. The coast guard's equipment includes 
about fifty ships, nine helicopters, and thirteen fixed-wing air- 
craft (see table 38, Appendix). 

Another Ministry of Defence paramilitary organization has a 
security mission. The Defence Security Force guards Ministry 
of Defence facilities throughout India. 

The Border Security Force was established in the closing 
days of the 1965 Indo-Pakistani conflict. Its principal mission 
involves guarding the Indo-Pakistani line of actual control in 
Jammu and Kashmir as well as borders with Bangladesh and 
Burma. It works in internal security and counterinsurgency 
operations in Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab. The 
border force has also been used to deal with communal rioting. 

Another Ministry of Homes Affairs paramilitary force 
deployed in Jammu and Kashmir is the Rashtriya Rifles. In 
1994 it had 5,000 troops, all of whom served in Jammu and 
Kashmir. Some observers expected the force to grow to thirty 
battalions, with around 25,000 personnel. In March 1995, 
Indian television referred to the Delta Force of the "fledgling" 
Rashtriya Rifles. It was reported that the force was operating 
against "terrorists" and "foreign mercenaries" in Doda District 
in south-central Jammu and Kashmir. 

Founded in 1939, the Central Reserve Police Force is the 
country's oldest paramilitary organization. It maintains inter- 
nal order when local and state-level forces prove inadequate to 
the task. The Central Reserve Police Force in Assam, Jammu 
and Kashmir, and Punjab has worked in counterinsurgency 
operations. This force also was dispatched to Sri Lanka during 
India's 1987-90 involvement there. The Ministry of Defence's 



599 



India: A Country Study 



weekly armed forces magazine, Sainik Samachar, reported that 
the Mahila Battalion (Women's Battalion) of the Central 
Reserve Police Force had "proved its mettle in hot warlike con- 
ditions in Sri Lanka," and had established women as "a force to 
reckon with" in the paramilitary. 

Another significant paramilitary organization is the Indo- 
Tibetan Border Police, established in 1962 in the aftermath of 
the war with China. It is primarily responsible for the security 
of the border with China. 

The Special Frontier Force, established in 1962 in the after- 
math of the war with China, is less well publicized by the gov- 
ernment. Apparently it is an elite, parachute-qualified 
commando unit, nominally subordinate to the army and 
deployed along sensitive areas of the border with China, and 
recruited partially from among border-area hill tribes and 
Tibetan refugees. The Special Frontier Force also appears to 
have a domestic security role; members of the force were 
involved in the Golden Temple siege in 1984. In 1994 its 
reported strength was 3,000, making it one of the smallest para- 
military forces. 

Reserve Forces 

India's "second line of defense" is composed of several citi- 
zen mass organizations. These include the Territorial Army, a 
voluntary, part-time civilian force that receives military training 
and serves as a reserve force for the army "to relieve [it] of 
static duties, to aid the civil power, and to provide units for the 
regular Army, if and when required." It was raised in 1949 and 
has been used in times of war and domestic disturbances. Orga- 
nizationally, Territorial Army personnel are raised from among 
employees of government agencies and public-sector enter- 
prises and are formed into departmental units. Nondepart- 
mental units are raised from other citizens, including former 
active-duty military personnel. In the early 1990s, Territorial 
Army units saw service in Jammu and Kashmir and along the 
northern and western borders of India and in support of para- 
military units subordinate to the Ministry of Home Affairs. 

The National Cadet Corps, which is open to young men and 
women, was established in 1948 to develop discipline and lead- 
ership qualities useful in life and particularly for potential ser- 
vice in the armed forces. The semiautonomous organization 
receives guidance from the ministries of education and 
defence at the central level and from state-level governments at 



600 



National Security 



the local level. It is organized into army, navy, and air force 
wings, and its ranks correspond to those in the respective 
armed forces. 

Civil Defence Volunteers are under the leadership of a small 
paid cadre, who are trained to provide early warning communi- 
cations at the town level. They also participate in civil works 
construction projects and natural disaster relief work. Subordi- 
nation is through the local state or territory government and 
the Ministry of Home Affairs. 

The Home Guards are a voluntary force raised by state and 
territory governments under the guidance of the Ministry of 
Home Affairs. Home Guards undergo minimal training and 
receive pay only when called for duty. They assist the police in 
crime prevention and detection; undertake watch and patrol 
duties; and aid in disaster relief, crowd control, and the super- 
vision of elections. The central government reimburses the 
states and territories at varying rates for expenses incurred in 
the performance of Home Guard duties. 

Space and Nuclear Programs 

India detonated its first and only nuclear device at Pokharan 
in the Rajasthan Desert in May 1974. Subsequently and in all 
likelihood as a consequence of international pressure, India 
has chosen not to conduct any further tests. At a formal level, 
Indian officials and strategists deny that India possesses nuclear 
weapons and refer to India's position as an "options strategy," 
which essentially means maintaining the nuclear weapons 
option and exercising it should regional and international con- 
ditions so warrant. In pursuit of this end, India refuses to sign 
the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. 
Formally, Indian officials argue that India's refusal to sign the 
treaty stems from its fundamentally discriminatory character; 
the treaty places restrictions on the nonnuclear weapons states 
but does little to curb the modernization and expansion of the 
nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapons states. 

The Indian ballistic missile program has some elements in 
common with the nuclear program. Under the aegis of the 
Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, India is 
developing rockets of varying ranges: the Agni, the Prithvi, the 
Akash, the Trishul, and the Nag. The Agni, which former 
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi referred to as a "technology dem- 
onstrator," was first test fired in May 1989 and again in May 
1992. In 1995 it was not yet operational, but it has interconti- 



601 



India: A Country Study 



nental ballistic missile potential. The Prithvi — which some 
sources reported had an operational unit raised in 1995 and 
deployed along the Pakistani border — is a tactical, short-range 
surface-to-surface missile designed by the DRDO as part of 
India's antimissile defense system. Based on the Soviet Scud 
missile, its 250-kilogram payload can be launched from a 
mobile launcher. The Trishul is a sea-skimming short-range 
missile. The Akash is a multitarget surface-to-air missile that 
was being test fired in 1994 and 1995. The Nag is essentially an 
antitank missile. 

The Indian missile program has been of concern to the 
United States, which, under the terms of the Missile Technol- 
ogy Control Regime, imposed sanctions against the Indian 
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in June 1992. In July 
1993, the United States prevailed upon the Russian space 
agency, Glavkosmos, not to transfer cryogenic rocket engines 
to India (see Russia; United States, ch. 9). The ISRO decided it 
would develop the engine on its own by 1997 while continuing 
to seek purchase of modified versions of the engines from Rus- 
sia. Seven such cryogenic engines were scheduled for delivery 
by Glavkosmos between 1996 and 1999. In keeping with its 
agreement with the United States, Glavkosmos was not going to 
transfer additional technology for cryogenic engines. However, 
cryogenic engine technology transfer had begun in 1991, and 
hence leading ISRO officials were confident about their 1997 
projection. 

Intelligence Services 

The first post-independence military intelligence service was 
the Intelligence Bureau established in 1947 under the aegis of 
the Ministry of Home Affairs. Until 1962 the Intelligence 
Bureau had wide-ranging responsibilities for the collection, 
collation, and assessment of both domestic and foreign intelli- 
gence. The failure of the Intelligence Bureau to assess ade- 
quately the nature of the Chinese threat, however, led to a 
reevaluation of its role and functions in the early 1960s. Mili- 
tary Intelligence, which in the words of one retired Indian gen- 
eral was "little more than a post office," was reactivated and 
given the task of reporting to the revamped Joint Intelligence 
Committee. The Joint Intelligence Committee is the key body 
coordinating and assessing intelligence brought to it by the 
Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, and the Research 
and Analysis Wing of the Office of the Prime Minister. Estab- 



602 



Navy missile destroyer, INS Rana 
Sailors in a ship's operations room 
Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 



603 



India: A Country Study 

lished in 1968, the Research and Analysis Wing is primarily 
responsible for gathering external intelligence. Despite a sub- 
stantial budget and extensive foreign postings, the wing's 
efforts to gather intelligence even in South Asia are inadequate 
according to some foreign analysts (see Role of the Prime Min- 
ister, ch. 9). 

Each of the armed services has a directorate charged with 
the collection and dissemination of intelligence. Critics have 
charged that there is inadequate cooperation and coordina- 
tion among the service intelligence directorates, the Intelli- 
gence Bureau, and the Research and Analysis Wing. There is, 
however, an interservice Joint Cipher Bureau, which is in 
charge of cryptology and signals intelligence. The Research 
and Analysis Wing includes officers from the armed services 
and also has a chief military intelligence adviser. 

Military Justice 

The Manual of Military Law and Regulations spells out rules 
and procedures for the investigation, prosecution, and punish- 
ment of military offenses and crimes in the armed forces. Basic 
authority rests in the constitution, the Army Act of 1954, the 
Air Force Act of 1950, and the Navy Act of 1957. 

The army and air force have three kinds of courts. They are, 
in descending order of power, the General Court, which con- 
ducts general courts-martial; the District Court; and the Sum- 
mary General Court. Additionally, the army has a fourth kind 
of court, the Summary Court. Local commanding officers con- 
duct this court with powers similar to nonjudicial punishment 
in the United States armed forces. The navy uses general 
courts-martial in addition to the nonjudicial powers established 
for commanders in the Navy Act. 

Courts-martial can be convened by the prime minister, min- 
ister of defence, chief of staff of the service concerned, or 
other officers so designated by the ministry or the chief of staff. 
There are channels of appeal and stages of judicial review, 
although procedures differ among the three services. 

Members of the armed forces remain subject concurrently 
to both civilian and military law, and criminal courts with 
appropriate jurisdictions assume priority over military courts in 
specific cases. With the approval of the government, a person 
convicted or acquitted by a court-martial can undergo retrial 
by a criminal court for the same offense and on the same evi- 



604 



National Security 



dence. Once tried by a civilian court, however, one cannot be 
tried by a military court for the same offense. 

Each of the three services has its own judge advocate gen- 
eral's department, relatively free and independent of the other 
branches in the discharge of its judicial functions. The various 
departments have officers among the adjutant general's staff at 
army headquarters, in the chief of personnel's staff at navy 
headquarters, and in the administration staff of the air force 
headquarters. 

Public Order and Internal Security 

Military Role Expansion 

The army has four major roles or functions in the mainte- 
nance of public order and internal security. One is to defend 
India's territorial integrity and to maintain the inviolability of 
its borders. Another involves dealing with internal security 
threats stemming from secessionist demands and externally 
supported insurgencies. The army also is called upon to assist 
Chilian authorities in maintaining civil order when local police 
forces and the paramilitary prove inadequate to the task. 
Finally, the army can also be mobilized to deal with natural 
disasters such as earthquakes and floods, the only domestic 
function that the army performs with enthusiasm. 

Despite the existence of numerous paramilitary forces, the 
army has had to quell outbreaks of civil violence, primarily in 
the states of Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, and Punjab (see Para- 
military Forces and Reserve Forces, this ch.). By the early 
1990s, army involvement in Assam and Punjab had diminished 
significantly as insurgencies waned. However, the role of the 
army in Jammu and Kashmir expanded substantially as both 
police and paramilitary forces failed to maintain law and order. 

In 1993 upper-echelon army officers warned that excessive 
use of the army to restore civil order might have a number of 
corrosive effects. First, it might damage the morale of troops 
who might be distressed at having to shoot civilians. Second, it 
might have the effect of politicizing the army. The outgoing 
chief of army staff, General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, publicly 
articulated his misgivings on this subject. Furthermore, in June 
1993, Rodrigues presented a report entitled "Maximizing Effec- 
tiveness of Central Police Organizations" to the Committee of 
Secretaries (composed of a "core group", the secretaries of 
defence, finance, and home affair, chaired by the cabinet secre- 



605 



India: A Country Study 

tary, and meeting on a weekly basis). The report called for the 
army to take over the training of paramilitary forces. 

Civil Liberties, Human Rights, and the Armed Forces 

In response to a range of insurgencies since the early 1980s, 
the central government has enacted an extensive array of legis- 
lation that places substantial curbs on civil liberties. The 
National Security Act of 1980, the National Security Amend- 
ment Act of 1984, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Pre- 
vention) Act of 1985 (which was renewed in 1987 and 
suspended in 1995), and the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kash- 
mir) Special Powers Act of 1990 are the most significant laws in 
force. The ramifications of these four laws are sweeping. Under 
their aegis, the central government has the right of preventive 
detention, may seek in-camera trials, may send accused individ- 
uals before designated courts, and may destroy property 
belonging to suspected terrorists. Furthermore, under the 
terms of the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Pow- 
ers Act, members of the armed forces cannot be prosecuted for 
actions committed in good faith in pursuance of the provisions 
of this law. 

During the 1980s and 1990s, both international and domes- 
tic human rights groups asserted that human rights violations 
are rampant. The principal international organizations making 
these allegations are the International Commission of Jurists, 
Amnesty International, and Asia Watch. Two Indian counter- 
parts are the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the Peo- 
ple's United Democratic Front. Indian and foreign press 
reports have alleged that local police and paramilitary forces 
have engaged in rape, torture, and beatings of suspects in 
police custody. Numerous "militants" reportedly have simply 
disappeared in Jammu and Kashmir. On other occasions, espe- 
cially in Punjab, security forces on various occasions allegedly 
captured insurgents and then shot them in staged "encounters" 
or "escapes." The government has either vigorously challenged 
these allegations or asserted that condign punishment had 
been meted out against offenders. The government has made 
efforts to blunt the barrage of domestic and foreign criticism. 
One such effort was the establishment of the five-member 
National Human Rights Commission in 1993 composed of 
senior retired judges. A report released by the commission in 
November 1993 cited eighty Bombay police officials for "atroci- 
ties, ill treatment, collusion, and connivance" and for "being 



606 



National Security 



openly on the side of the Hindu aggressors" during the Decem- 
ber 1992 Hindu-Muslim riots. The commission's mandate does 
not extend to violations in Jammu and Kashmir and northeast 
India, and it must rely on state investigative agencies for its 
field work. 

Insurgent Movements and External Subversion 

Kashmir 

In the mid-1990s, India was grappling with three separate 
insurgencies of varying strengths in the states of Assam, Jammu 
and Kashmir, and Punjab. The insurgency in Jammu and Kash- 
mir has the most serious implications for India. The long-term 
roots of the Kashmir problem can be traced to the partition of 
India (see National Integration, ch. 1). The crisis centers on a 
militant secessionist demand that the Indian state has harshly 
suppressed. Its proximate causes are located in the central gov- 
ernment's attempts to manipulate state-level politics for short- 
term political ends. Since 1989, approximately 10,000 civilians 
have died at the hands of security forces or militants. Although 
the origins of the crisis are quintessentially indigenous, there is 
widespread agreement among both Indian and foreign observ- 
ers that the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan has 
actively aided and abetted some of the insurgent groups, most 
notably, the radical Islamic Hezb-ul-Mujahideen. 

The counterinsurgency strategy that the Indian government 
has adopted in Jammu and Kashmir was developed in the con- 
text of dealing with guerrilla movements in India's northeast in 
the late 1970s. This strategy involves denying the guerrillas any 
sanctuaries, sealing the porous Indo-Pakistani border, and 
using both army and paramilitary forces to conduct house-to- 
house "cordon-and-search" operations. Whether this strategy 
will lead eventually to the collapse of the insurgency in Jammu 
and Kashmir remains an open question; violence has contin- 
ued to accelerate since 1993, with mounting casualties on both 
sides and the destruction of an ancient mosque and shrine in 
1995 (see Political Issues, ch. 8; South Asia, ch. 9). 

Punjab 

The insurgency in the state of Punjab originated in the late 
1970s. The roots of this insurgency are complex. The Green 
Revolution, a package of agricultural inputs, transformed the 
socioeconomic landscape of Punjab (see The Green Revolu- 



607 



India: A Country Study 

tion, ch. 7). Amidst this new-found prosperity, large numbers 
of Sikhs started to shed some of the trappings of their faith. 
This propensity rekindled an age-old fear in the Sikh commu- 
nity — that of being absorbed into the Hindu fold. In turn, 
many Punjabi Sikhs, who were dispossessed of their land as a 
consequence of agricultural transformation, found solace in 
various revivalistic practices. One of the leaders of this revivalis- 
tic movement was Sant Jar nail Singh Bhindranwale, a politi- 
cally ambitious itinerant Sikh preacher. The second factor 
contributing to the insurgency was the attempt by Indira Gan- 
dhi (India's prime minister, 1966-77 and 1980-84), the Con- 
gress, and from 1978 Congress (I) to use Bhindranwale to 
undermine the position of the Akali Dal (Eternal Party), a 
regional party (see Political Parties, ch. 8). Bhindranwale and 
his followers were encouraged to verbally intimidate Akali Dal 
politicians. Although this strategy met with some success, Bhin- 
dranwale and his followers became a source of mayhem and 
disruption in Punjab. Eventually, in June 1984, Gandhi had to 
order units of the Indian army to flush out Bhindranwale and 
his followers, who had taken refuge in the Golden Temple 
complex, Sikhism's most holy shrine, in Amritsar, Punjab (see 
Sikhism, ch. 3). 

This exercise, Operation Bluestar, was, at best, a mixed suc- 
cess. After all efforts at negotiation failed, Indira Gandhi 
ordered the army to storm the temple. A variety of army units, 
along with substantial numbers of paramilitary forces, sur- 
rounded the temple complex on June 3, 1984. After the 
demands to surrender peacefully were met with volleys of gun- 
fire from within the confines of the temple, the army was given 
the order to take the temple by force. Indian intelligence 
authorities had underestimated the firepower possessed by the 
militants, however, and the army brought in tanks and heavy 
artillery to suppress the antitank and machine-gun fire. After a 
twenty-four-hour firefight, the army successfully took control of 
the temple. According to Indian government sources, eighty- 
three army personnel were killed and 249 injured. Insurgent 
casualties were 493 killed and eighty-six injured. Indian observ- 
ers assert that the number of Sikh casualties was probably 
higher. 

The attack on the Golden Temple had the effect of inflam- 
ing significant segments of the Sikh community. It is widely 
believed that the two Sikh bodyguards who assassinated Indira 
Gandhi on October 31, 1984, were driven by their anger over 



608 



m 



An Indian Air Force crew prepares for takeoff. 
Courtesy Indian Ministry of External Affairs 
A Sea Harrier jet, from the Indian Navy's White Tigers Squadron, 

on patrol 

Courtesy Embassy of India, Washington 



609 



India: A Country Study 



the Golden Temple episode. In the wake of Indira Gandhi's 
assassination, mobs rampaged through the streets of New Delhi 
and other parts of India over the next few days, killing several 
thousand Sikhs. The New Delhi police proved to be partisan 
observers and did little to stop or apprehend the rioters. Only 
after the deployment of the army, almost three days after the 
onset of the riots, was order fully restored. 

The New Delhi riots had repercussions in Punjab as militants 
stepped up their activities. Gandhi's son and political successor, 
Rajiv Gandhi, sought unsuccessfully to bring peace to Punjab 
with an accord signed with Harchand Singh Longowal, a mod- 
erate Sikh leader. Rajiv Gandhi's successors, belonging to the 
Janata factions, proved to be no more adept at resolving the cri- 
sis. In fact, between 1987 and 1991, Punjab was placed under 
President's Rule and governed directly from New Delhi (see 
The Executive, ch. 8). Eventually, an election was held in the 
state in February 1992. Voter turnout, however, was poor; only 
about 24 percent of the population participated in the elec- 
tions. Despite its narrow mandate, the newly elected Congress 
(I) government gave a free hand to the police chief of the 
state, K.P.S. Gill. His ruthless methods significantly weakened 
the insurgent movement. Most political observers, however, 
assert that long-term political stability in Punjab depends on 
addressing the underlying grievances of segments of the Sikh 
community. 

Assam and the Northeast 

The origins of the insurgency in Assam are quite different 
from those in Kashmir and Punjab. The principal grievance of 
the radical student movement, the United Liberation Front of 
Assam, is nativist. Front members are violently opposed to the 
presence of Bengalis from the neighboring state of West Ben- 
gal and waves of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Various 
rounds of negotiations between the United Liberation Front of 
Assam and two successive central governments resulted in the 
Assam Accord of August 15, 1985. Under the provisions of this 
accord, persons who entered the state illegally between January 
1966 and March 1971 were allowed to remain but were disen- 
franchised for ten years, while those who entered after 1971 
faced expulsion. A November 1985 amendment to the Indian 
citizenship law allows noncitizens who entered Assam between 
1961 and 1971 to have all the rights of citizenship except the 
right to vote for a period of ten years. 



610 



National Security 



In 1993 an accord was reached between the Bodo tribe and 
the central and state governments. The accord established the 
Bodoland Autonomous Council, which gave the Bodos limited 
political and administrative autonomy. Nevertheless, violence 
broke out in 1994: members of the Bodo Security Force, in the 
wake of demands for a "liberated Bodoland" burned several vil- 
lages and killed around 100 immigrant villagers. Both local 
counterinsurgency forces and army units were sent in to 
engage the Bodo militants. 

A number of other insurgencies in the northeast have 
required extensive use of army and paramilitary forces. Four 
states in particular have witnessed various insurgent and guer- 
rilla movements. The first and perhaps the most significant 
insurgency originated in Nagaland in the early 1950s; it was 
eventually quelled in the early 1980s through a mixture of 
repression and cooptation. In 1993 Nagaland experienced 
recrudescent violence as two ethnic groups, the Nagas and the 
Kukis, engaged in brutal conflict with each other. Adding to 
India's internal unrest in this region were the links established 
between the Bodo insurgents in Assam and the National Social- 
ist Council of Nagaland, which, in turn, had links to other 
active insurgent groups and, reportedly, operatives in Thai- 
land. 

In neighboring Manipur, militants organized under the 
aegis of the People's Liberation Army long fought to unite the 
Meitei tribes of Burma and Manipur into an independent state. 
This insurgent movement had been largely suppressed by the 
mid-1990s. 

In Mizoram the Mizo National Front fought a running battle 
with the Indian security forces throughout the 1960s. As in 
Nagaland, this insurgency was suppressed in the early 1980s 
through a mixture of political concessions and harsh military 
tactics. 

In the state of Tripura, tribal peoples organized under the 
leadership of the Tripura National Front were also responsible 
for terrorist activity. This movement has, for the most part, also 
been brought under control by the government. 

The central government's success in quelling these insurgen- 
cies was not without human and material costs. Although no 
assessments of these costs exist in the public domain, it is 
widely believed that the paramilitary forces and the army were 
given a free hand in suppressing the uprisings. A prominent 
Indian human rights activist and attorney, Nandita Haksar, has 



611 



India: A Country Study 

alleged that harsh methods were routinely used, including col- 
lective punishment of villagers accused of harboring terrorists 
in remote areas. Because of the continued level of insurgency 
by Assamese and other groups, which had bases in neighboring 
Burma, India and Burma started joint counterinsurgency oper- 
ations against the rebels in May 1995, the first such operations 
since the 1980s. 

Law Enforcement 

National-Level Agencies 

The constitution assigns responsibility for maintaining law 
and order to the states and territories, and almost all routine 
policing — including apprehension of criminals — is carried out 
by state-level police forces. The constitution also permits the 
central government to participate in police operations and 
organization by authorizing the maintenance of the Indian 
Police Service. Police officers are recruited by the Union Pub- 
lic Service Commission through a competitive nationwide 
examination. On completion of a nationwide basic public-ser- 
vice course, police officer candidates attend the National 
Police Academy at Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. They are then 
assigned to particular state or union territory forces, where 
they usually remain for the rest of their careers. About 50 per- 
cent of the officers are regularly assigned to states or territories 
other than their own in an effort to promote national integra- 
tion. 

The constitution also authorizes the central government to 
maintain whatever forces are necessary to safeguard national 
security. Under the terms of the constitution, paramilitary 
forces can be legally detailed to assist the states but only if so 
requested by the state governments. In practice, the central 
government has largely observed these limits. In isolated 
instances, the central government has deployed its paramilitary 
units to protect central government institutions over the pro- 
test of a state government. During the Emergency of 1975-77, 
the constitution was amended (effective February 1, 1976) to 
permit the central government to dispatch and deploy its para- 
military forces without regard to the wishes of the states (see 
The Rise of Indira Gandhi, ch. 1). This action proved unpopu- 
lar, and the use of the paramilitary forces was controversial. 
After the Emergency was lifted, the constitution was amended 
in December 1978 to make deployment of central government 



612 



National Security 



paramilitary forces once again dependent on the consent of 
the state government. According to apologists for the central 
government, this amendment prevented the government from 
sending in paramilitary forces to protect the Babri Masjid 
(Babri Mosque) in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, in December 1992 
(see Public Worship, ch. 3). 

The principal national-level organization concerned with 
law enforcement is the Ministry of Home Affairs, which super- 
vises a large number of government functions and agencies 
operated and administered by the central government. The 
ministry is concerned with all matters pertaining to the mainte- 
nance of public peace and order, the staffing and administra- 
tion of the public services, the delineation of internal 
boundaries, and the administration of union territories. 

In addition to managing the Indian Police Service, the Min- 
istry of Home Affairs maintains several agencies and organiza- 
tions dealing with police and security. Police in the union 
territories are the responsibility of the Police Division, which 
also runs the National Police Academy and the Institute of 
Criminology and Forensic Science. The Central Bureau of 
Investigation investigates crimes that might involve public offi- 
cials or have ramifications for several states. The ministry also is 
the parent organization of the Border Security Force. 

State and Other Police Services 

The Police Act of 1861 established the fundamental princi- 
ples of organization for police forces in India, and, with minor 
modifications, continues in effect. Consequently, although 
state-level police forces are separate and may differ in terms of 
the quality of equipment and resources, their patterns of orga- 
nization and operation are markedly similar. 

An inspector general, answerable to the home secretary of 
the state, heads each state, union territory, or national capital 
territory police force. Under the inspector general are a num- 
ber of police "ranges" composed of three to six districts, 
headed by deputy inspectors general. District police headquar- 
ters are commanded by superintendents. District superinten- 
dents have wide discretionary powers and are responsible for 
overseeing subordinate police stations as well as specialty ele- 
ments, such as criminal investigation detachments, equipment 
storehouses and armories, and traffic police. Many large dis- 
tricts also have several assistant district superintendents. 



613 



India: A Country Study- 
Most preventive police work is carried out bv constables 
assigned to police stations. Depending on the number of sta- 
tions there, a district may be subdivided and., in some states, 
further divided into police "circles" to facilitate the supervision 
from district headquarters. Most of the major metropolitan 
areas such as New Delhi. Bombay Calcutta, and Madras have 
separate municipal forces headed bv commissioners. Police in 
the states and union territories are assisted bv units of volun- 
teer Home Guards, maintained under guidelines formulated 
bv the Ministry of Home Affairs. 

In most states and territories, police forces are functionally 
divided into civil (unarmed) police and armed contingents. 
The former staff police stations, conduct investigations, answer 
routine complaints, perform traffic duties, and patrol the 
streets. Thev usually carry lathis — bamboo staffs weighted or 
tipped with iron. 

Contingents of armed police are divided into two groups, 
the district armed police and the Provincial .Armed Constabu- 
lary The district armed police are organized along the lines of 
an army infantry battalion. Thev are assigned to police stations 
and perform guard and escort duties. Those states that main- 
tain distinct armed contingents employ them as a reserve strike 
force for emergencies. Such units are organized either as a 
mobile armed force under direct state control or in the case of 
district armed police (who are not as well equipped) as a force 
directed bv district superintendents and generally used for riot- 
control duty 

The Provincial Armed Constabulary (Pradeshik) is an 
armed reserve maintained at kev locations in some states and 
active onlv on orders from the deputy inspector general and 
higher-level authorities. Armed constabulary are not usually in 
contact with the public until thev are assigned to VIP duty or 
assigned to maintain order during fairs, festivals, athletic 
events, elections, and natural disasters. Thev mav also be sent 
to quell outbreaks of student or labor unrest., organized crime, 
and communal riots: to maintain kev guard posts; and to par- 
ticipate in antiterrorist operations. Depending on the type of 
assignment, the Provincial .Armed Constabulary mav carry only 
lathis. 

At all levels, the senior police officers answer to the police 
chain of command and respond to the general direction and 
control of designated civilian officials. In the municipal force.. 



614 



Police officer directing traffic in 
Bangalore 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 




the chain of command runs directly to the state home secretary 
rather than to the district superintendent or district officials. 

Working conditions and pay are poor, especially in the lower 
echelons of the police forces. Recruits receive only around 
Rsl,900 per month (about US$64). Opportunities for promo- 
tion are limited because of the system of horizontal entry into 
higher grades. Allegations of bribery, attributable to the low 
pay and poor working conditions, have been widespread. 

Since the late 1980s, women have entered in larger numbers 
into the higher echelons of the Indian police, mostly through 
the Indian Police Service system. Women police officers were 
first used in 1972, and a number of women hold key positions 
in various state police organizations. However, their absolute 
numbers, regardless of rank, are small. Uniformed and under- 
cover women police officers have been deployed in New Delhi 
as the Anti-Eve Teasing Squad, which combats sexual harass- 
ment against women ("Eves"). Several women-only police sta- 
tions have also been established in Tamil Nadu to handle sex 
crimes against women. 

Police uniforms vary widely according to grade, region, and 
kind of duty performed. Among the armed police, uniforms 
tend to resemble army dress rather than conventional police 
uniforms. The khaki uniforms of the Indian Police Service offi- 



615 



India: A Country Study 

cers are similar in all states, but headgear varies widely, espe- 
cially among metropolitan areas. 

The Criminal Justice System 

The criminal justice system descends from the British model. 
The judiciary and the bar are independent although efforts 
have been made by some politicians to undermine the auton- 
omy of the judiciary. From about the time of Indira Gandhi's 
tenure as prime minister, the executive has treated judicial 
authorities in an arbitrary fashion. Judges who handed down 
decisions that challenged the regime in office have on occasion 
been passed over for promotion, for example. Furthermore, 
unpopular judges have been given less-than-desirable assign- 
ments. Because the pay and perquisites of the judiciary have 
not kept up with salaries and benefits in the private sector, 
fewer able members of the legal profession have entered the 
ranks of the senior judiciary. 

Despite the decline in the caliber and probity of the judi- 
ciary, established procedures for the protection of defendants, 
except in the case of strife-torn areas, are routinely observed. 
The penal philosophy embraces the ideals of preventing crime 
and rehabilitating criminals. 

Criminal Law and Procedure 

Under the constitution, criminal jurisdiction belongs con- 
currently to the central government and the states. The prevail- 
ing law on crime prevention and punishment is embodied in 
two principal statutes: the Indian Penal Code and the Code of 
Criminal Procedure of 1973. These laws take precedence over 
any state legislation, and the states cannot alter or amend 
them. Separate legislation enacted by both the states and the 
central government also has established criminal liability for 
acts such as smuggling, illegal use of arms and ammunition, 
and corruption. All legislation, however, remains subordinate 
to the constitution. 

The Indian Penal Code came into force in 1862; as 
amended, it continued in force in 1993. Based on British crimi- 
nal law, the code defines basic crimes and punishments, applies 
to resident foreigners and citizens alike, and recognizes 
offenses committed abroad by Indian nationals. 

The penal code classifies crimes under various categories: 
crimes against the state, the armed forces, public order, the 



616 



National Security 



human body, and property; and crimes relating to elections, 
religion, marriage, and health, safety, decency, and morals. 
Crimes are cognizable or noncognizable, comparable to the 
distinction between felonies and misdemeanors in legal use in 
the United States. Six categories of punishment include fines, 
forfeiture of property, simple imprisonment, rigorous impris- 
onment with hard labor, life imprisonment, and death. An 
individual can be imprisoned for failure to pay fines, and up to 
three months' solitary confinement can occur during rare rig- 
orous imprisonment sentences. Commutation is possible for 
death and life sentences. Executions are by hanging and are 
rare — there were only three in 1993 and two in 1994 — and are 
usually reserved for crimes such as political assassination and 
multiple murders. 

Courts of law try cases under procedures that resemble the 
Anglo-American pattern. The machinery for prevention and 
punishment through the criminal court system rests on the 
Code of Criminal Procedure of 1973, which came into force on 
April 1, 1974, replacing a code dating from 1898. The code 
includes provisions to expedite the judicial process, increase 
efficiency, prevent abuses, and provide legal relief to the poor. 
The basic framework of the criminal justice system, however, 
was left unchanged. 

Constitutional guarantees protect the accused, as do various 
provisions embodied in the 1973 code. Treatment of those 
arrested under special security legislation can depart from 
these norms, however. In addition, for all practical purposes, 
the implementation of these norms varies widely based on the 
class and social background of the accused. In most cases, 
police officers have to secure a warrant from a magistrate 
before instituting searches and seizing evidence. Individuals 
taken into custody have to be advised of the charges brought 
against them, have the right to seek counsel, and have to 
appear before a magistrate within twenty-four hours of arrest. 
The magistrate has the option to release the accused on bail. 
During trial a defendant is protected against self-incrimination, 
and only confessions given before a magistrate are legally valid. 
Criminal cases usually take place in open trial, although in lim- 
ited circumstances closed trials occur. Procedures exist for 
appeal to higher courts. 

India has an integrated and relatively independent court sys- 
tem. At the apex is the Supreme Court, which has original, 
appellate, and advisory jurisdiction (see The Judiciary, ch. 8). 



617 



India: A Country Study 

Below it are eighteen high courts that preside over the states 
and union territories. The high courts have supervisory 
authority over all subordinate courts within their jurisdictions. 
In general, these include several district courts headed by dis- 
trict magistrates, who in turn have several subordinate magis- 
trates under their supervision. The Code of Criminal 
Procedure established three sets of magistrates for the subordi- 
nate criminal courts. The first consists of executive magistrates, 
whose duties include issuing warrants, advising the police, and 
determining proper procedures to deal with public violence. 
The second consists of judicial magistrates, who are essentially 
trial judges. Petty criminal cases are sometimes settled in pan- 
chayat (see Glossary) courts. 

The Penal System 

The constitution assigns the custody and correction of crimi- 
nals to the states and territories. Day-to-day administration of 
prisoners rests on principles incorporated in the Prisons Act of 
1894, the Prisoners Act of 1900, and the Transfer of Prisoners 
Act of 1950. An inspector general of prisons administers prison 
affairs in each state and territory. 

By the prevailing standards of society, prison conditions are 
often adequate. Some prison administrators concede that the 
prevailing conditions of poverty in Indian society contribute to 
recidivism because a prison sentence guarantees minimal levels 
of food, clothing, and shelter. Despite this overall view, India's 
prisons are seriously overcrowded, prisoners are given better or 
worse treatment according to the nature of their crime and 
class status, sanitary conditions are poor, and punishments for 
misbehavior while incarcerated have been known to be particu- 
larly onerous. 

Prison conditions vary from state to state. The more prosper- 
ous states have better facilities and attempt rehabilitation pro- 
grams; the poorer ones can afford only the most bare and 
primitive accommodations. Women prisoners are mostly incar- 
cerated in segregated areas of men's prisons. Conditions for 
holding prisoners also vary according to classification. India 
retains a system set up during the colonial period that man- 
dates different treatment for different categories of prisoners. 
Under this system, foreigners, individuals held for political rea- 
sons, and prisoners of high caste and class are segregated from 
lower-class prisoners and given better treatment. This treat- 
ment includes larger or less-crowded cells, access to books and 



618 



Public security awareness sign in New Delhi 
Courtesy Robert L. Worden 

newspapers, and more and better food. Despite laws that man- 
date egalitarian treatment of Dalits (see Glossary), members of 
Scheduled Tribes (see Glossary), and members of the so-called 
Backward Glasses (see Glossary), a rigid class system that cir- 
cumvents the spirit of these laws exists within the prison system 
(see Varna, Caste and Other Divisions, ch. 5). 

The press and human rights groups periodically raise the 
subject of prison conditions, including problems of overcrowd- 
ing, the plight of prisoners detained for long periods while 
awaiting trial, and the proper treatment of women and juvenile 
prisoners (children are often incarcerated with their parents) . 
Reports have also surfaced alleging that torture, beatings, rape, 
sexual abuse, and unexplained suicides occur on many occa- 
sions in police stations and prisons. Because of a shortage of 
mental institutions, numerous "non-criminal lunatics" are 
imprisoned, often under conditions worse than those afforded 
criminals. The government concedes that problems exist, but 
insists that its attempts at prison reform have suffered from a 
paucity of resources. 

National Security Challenges 

As the twenty-first century approaches, India faces a number 



619 



India: A Country Study 

of key challenges to its national security. The vast majority of 
emergent threats are essentially from within. 

Because of increased educational opportunities, greater 
political awareness, and media exposure, hitherto quiescent 
ethnic minorities are steadily claiming their rights in the politi- 
cal arena. This form of political assertiveness has generated a 
backlash from the well-entrenched segments of India's majority 
population. Much violence has accompanied this process of 
social change. Increased use of coercion alone, however, is 
unlikely to contain ethnoreligious violence. Further develop- 
ment of India's political institutions and social policies is also 
needed. 

A related national security problem in the region is linked to 
the porous borders and cross-national ethnic ties that charac- 
terize South Asia. Consequently, Pakistan has found it expedi- 
ent to support Muslim militants in Jammu and Kashmir and, to 
a lesser degree, Sikh insurgents in Punjab. India, on occasion, 
has retaliated in Pakistan's Sindh Province, supporting various 
movements for Sindhi autonomy. Furthermore, India has also 
been involved in supporting the Tamil extremists in Sri Lanka. 
As long as governments in the region yield to these tempta- 
tions for short-term gains, continued fratricidal violence is 
inevitable. 

The other major source of instability in the region stems 
from the proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missile capabili- 
ties in both India and Pakistan. The long-standing border dis- 
pute with China and the memories of the 1962 military debacle 
have encouraged India's efforts to acquire these capabilities. 
India's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction may well 
precipitate a three-way arms race in the region involving India, 
Pakistan, and China. Such an arms race not only would be stra- 
tegically destabilizing but also would impose enormous costs 
on resource-poor societies. 

* * * 

Stephen Philip Cohen's The Indian Army is the best work on 
the historical evolution of the Indian army. One of the earliest 
and still useful accounts of India's security problems is Lome J. 
Kavic's India's Quest for Security. Raju G.C. Thomas's Indian Secu- 
rity Policy is probably the most comprehensive, although not 
necessarily the most analytic, treatment of Indian security ques- 
tions. Basic armed forces information appears in SP's Military 



620 



National Security 



Yearbook and the weekly armed forces news magazine Sainik 
Samachar (available in thirteen languages), both published in 
New Delhi. Analyses of the state of India's armed forces, includ- 
ing its paramilitary forces, periodically appear in the journal 
Armed Forces and Society. Within India the best discussions of 
security issues are found in the privately produced Indian 
Defence Review and the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses 
Journal, the house journal of the government-supported think 
tank, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. Broader 
discussions of regional security issues can be found in Survival, 
published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in 
London. 

The various wars that have taken place in the region are well 
documented. The best analyses are Lionel Protip Sen's Slender 
Was the Thread on the 1947-48 conflict, D.K. Palit's War in the 
High Himalaya and Stephen Hoffmann's India and The China 
Crisis on the 1962 India-China border war, Russell Brines's The 
Indo-Pakistani Conflict on the 1965 war, and Robert Jackson's 
South Asian Crisis and Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose's War and 
Secession on the 1971 Indo-Pakistani conflict. Sumit Ganguly's 
The Origins of War in South Asia is the only comparative and 
comprehensive account of the three Indo-Pakistani conflicts. 
Civil-military relations and defense decision-making issues have 
been discussed in articles written jointly byjerrold F. Elkin and 
W. Andrew Ritezel and by Sumit Ganguly. 

An excellent discussion of nuclear proliferation issues is 
found in Stephen Philip Cohen's Nuclear Proliferation in South 
Asia. Indian nuclear and ballistic missile programs are dis- 
cussed in some detail in Brahma Chellaney's Nuclear Prolifera- 
tion: The U.S. -Indian Conflict. For an early analysis of the 
motivations underlying the Indian nuclear program, see Sumit 
Ganguly's "Why India Joined the Nuclear Club." Another use- 
ful analysis of India's nuclear and ballistic missile programs is 
Raju G.C. Thomas's "India's Nuclear and Space Programs: 
Defense or Development?" An important discussion of Indian 
strategic culture and doctrine is George K. Tanham's "Indian 
Strategic Culture." (For further information and complete cita- 
tions, see Bibliography.) 



621 



Appendix 



Table 

1 Metric Conversion Coefficients and Factors 

2 Annual Climatic Statistics, Selected Stations, 1990 

3 Area, Population, and Population Density by State and 

Union Territory, 1981 and 1991 

4 Population and Population Density, Actual and Projected, 

Selected Years, 1901-2020 

5 Distribution of Urban Population by Size of City, Selected 

Years, 1901-91 

6 Population and Population Increase in Urban Agglom- 

erates with More Than 1 Million Persons, 1971-91 

7 Infant Mortality, Selected Years, 1911-95 

8 Health Care Services, Selected Fiscal Years, 1960-91 

9 Enrollment of School Children by Age, Selected School 

Years, 1950-91 

10 Number of Schools and Teachers, Selected School Years, 

1950-51 to 1986-87 

11 Enrollment by Education Level, Selected School Years, 

1950-51 to 1990-91 

12 Enrollment of School-Age Population by Gender, Selected 

School Years, 1960-61 to 1986-87 

13 Religious Affiliations, 1991 

14 National Calendar and Government Holidays 

15 Vernacular Languages with More Than 1 Million Speakers, 

1991 

16 Growth of Gross National Product, Fiscal Years 1951-89 

17 Gross Domestic Product by Sector, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1970-91 

18 Government Income and Expenditure, Fiscal Years 1981, 

1989, and 1992 

19 Balance of Trade, Selected Fiscal Years, 1980-93 

20 Principal Exports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 

21 Principal Imports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 

22 Major Trading Partners, Fiscal Years 1990-93 

23 Balance of Payments, Fiscal Years 1988-93 

24 Share of Public and Private Sectors in Gross Domestic 



623 



India: A Country Study 

Product (GDP), Fiscal Years 1981 and 1992 

25 Production of Selected Industrial Products, Selected Fiscal 

Years, 1970-92 

26 Area Planted in Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1950-90 

27 Land Use, Selected Fiscal Years, 1970-87 

28 Harvested and Irrigated Areas, Selected Fiscal Years, 1970- 

90 

29 Production and Sale of Selected Mechanized Agricultural 

Equipment, Selected Fiscal Years, 1986-91 

30 Yield of Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 1950-90 

31 Production of Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 1950- 

90 

32 Area under High- Yielding Varieties, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1950-90 

33 Lok Sabha Elections, 1952-91 

34 Order of Battle for the Armed Forces, 1994 

35 Major Army Equipment, 1994 

36 Major Naval Equipment, 1994 

37 Major Air Force Equipment, 1994 

38 Major Coast Guard Equipment, 1994 



624 



Appendix 



Table 1. Metric Conversion Coefficients and Factors 

When you know Multiply by To find 



Millimeters 


0.04 


inches 


Centimeters 


0.39 


inches 


Meters 


3.3 


feet 


Kilometers 


0.62 


miles 




2.47 


acres 


Square kilometers 


0.39 


square miles 


Cubic meters 


35.3 


cubic feet 


Liters 


0.26 


gallons 


Kilograms 


2.2 


pounds 


Metric tons 


0.98 


long tons 




1.1 


short tons 




2,204.0 


pounds 


Degrees Celsius (Centigrade) 


1.8 


degrees Fahrenhei 



and add 32 



Table 2. Annual Climatic Statistics, Selected Stations, 1990 

Approximate Average Temperature Range 

c . T) rr . (in degrees Celsius) 

Station Precipitation v 5 1 

(in millimeters) Minimum Maximum 



Bangalore 750 14.5 34.7 

Bombay 877 19.8 33.2 

Calcutta 2,167 14.2 34.5 

Darjiling 2,783 1.7 21.6 

Hyderabad 1,596 15.0 38.8 

Madras 1,058 19.8 36.1 

New Delhi 911 8.3 39.9 

Patna 1,011 9.4 36.4 

Port Blair 2,257 22.1 31.9 

Shillong 2,427 7.1 24.2 

Shimla 1,767 4.0 25.3 

Srinagar 1,239 -1.7 30.8 

Thiruvananthapuram 2,357 22.1 33.6 

Vishakhapatnam 2,004 21.0 32.9 



Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Planning, Department of Statis- 
tics, Central Statistical Organisation, Statistical Pocket Book, 1991, New Delhi, 
1992, 225-28. 



625 



India: A Country Study 



Table 3. Area, Population, and Population Density by State and 
Union Territory, 1981 and 1991 



State or Union Territory 



Area (in 
square 
kilometers) 



Population 
(in thousands) 



Population Density 
(persons per square 
kilometer) 





1981 


1991 


1981 


1991 


8,249 


189 


281 


23 


34 


275,045 


53,550 


66,508 


195 


242 


83,743 


632 


865 


8 


10 


78,438 


18.041 1 


22,414 


230 


286 


173,877 


69,915 


86,374 


402 


497 


114 


452 


642 


3,961 


5,632 


491 


104 


138 


211 


282 


112 


79 


102 


705 


907 


1,483 


6,220 


9,420 


4,194 


6,352 


3,702 


1,008 


1,170 


272 


316 


196,024 


34,086 


41,310 


174 


211 


44,212 


12,922 


16,464 


292 


372 


55,673 


4,281 


5,171 


77 


93 


222,236 


5,987 


7,719 s 


59 


76 


191,791 


37,136 


44,977 


194 


235 


38,863 


25,454 


29,098 


655 


749 


32 


40 


52 


1,258 


1,616 


443,446 


52,179 


66,181 


118 


149 


307,713 


62,784 


78,937 


204 


257 


22,327 


1,421 


1,837 


64 


82 


22,249 


1,336 


1,774 


60 


79 


21,081 


494 


690 


23 


33 


16,579 


775 


1,210 


47 


73 


155,707 


26,370 


31,660 


169 


203 


492 


604 


807 


1,229 


1,642 


50,362 


16,789 


20,282 


333 


403 


342,239 


34,262 


44,005 


100 


129 


7,096 


316 


406 


45 


57 


130,058 


48,408 


55,859 


372 


429 


10,486 


2,053 


2,757 


196 


263 



Andaman and Nicobar 
Islands 

Andhra Pradesh 

Arunachal Pradesh 

Assam 

Bihar 

Chandigarh 

Dadra and Nagar 

Haveli 

Daman and Diu 

Delhi 

Goa 

Gujarat 

Haryana 

Himachal Pradesh 

Jammu and Kashmir. . . 

Karnataka 

Kerala 

Lakshadweep 

Madhya Pradesh 

Maharashtra 

Manipur 

Meghalaya 

Mizoram 

Nagaland 

Orissa 

Pondicherry 

Punjab 

Rajasthan 

Sikkim 

Tamil Nadu 

Tripura 



626 



Appendix 



Table 3. ( Continued) Area, Population, and Population Density by 
State and Union Territory, 1981 and 1991 



Area (in „ . . Population Density 

Population . r ' 

square thousands) (persons per square 

State or Union Territory kilometers) v ' kilometer) 







1981 


1991 


1981 


1991 


Uttar Pradesh 


294,411 


110,863 


139,112 


377 


473 


West Bengal 


88,752 


54,581 


68,078 


615 


767 


INDIA 3 


3,287,263 


683,329 


846,303 


216 


257 



The 1981 census was not conducted in Assam. The population figures for 1981 for Assam have been calculated by 
interpolation by Indian census officials. 

2 The 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir. The population figures for 1991 forjammu and Kash- 
mir were projected by the Standing Committee of Experts on Population Projections in October 1989. They do 
not include the population of areas controlled by Pakistan and China. 

3 Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Registrar General 
and Census Commissioner, Census of India 1991: Final Population Totals: Brief 
Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series-1, Paper-2 of 1992, New Delhi, 1993, 
78-97. 



627 



India: A Country Study 



Table 4. Population and Population Density, Actual and Projected, 
Selected Years, 1901-2020 



Population Density 

Year Population 1 (persons per square 

kilometer) 

1901 . 238,396,327 77 

1911 252,093,390 82 

1921 251,321,213 81 

1931 278,977,238 90 

1941 318,660,580 103 

1951 361,088,090 117 

1961 439,234,771 142 

1971 548,159,652 177 

1981 683,329,097 216 

1991 846,302,688 267 

1995 2 936,545,814 284 

2000 2 1,018,105,000 309 

2010 2 1,173,621,000 357 

2020 2 1,320,746,000 401 



1 Data before 1951 include population of prepartition India, which included areas that later became Pakistan and 
Bangladesh. 

2 Projected by United States Bureau of the Census. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Registrar General 
and Census Commissioner, Census of India 1991, Provisional Population Totals, 
Series-1, Paper-1 of 1991, New Delhi, March 1991, 43; India, Ministry of Home 
Affairs, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India 1991, 
Final Population Totals: Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series-1, Paper-2 
of 1992, New Delhi, 1993, 78 and 86; and United States, Bureau of the Census, 
World Population Profile: 1994, Washington, February 1994, A-5. 



628 



Appendix 



Table 5. Distribution of Urban Population by Size of City, Selected 
Years, 1901-91 
(in percentages of total urban population) 

Size of Urban Center and ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Number or Inhabitants 



Class I (100,000 and above) . . . 


26.0 


44.6 


51.4 


57.2 


60.4 


65.2 


Class n (50,000 to 99,999) 


11.3 


10.0 


11.2 


10.9 


11.6 


10.9 


Class HI (20,000 to 49,999) 


15.6 


15.7 


16.9 


16.0 


14.3 


13.2 


Class IV (10,000 to 19,999)... . 


20.8 


13.6 


12.8 


10.9 


9.5 


7.8 


Class V (5,000 to 9,999) 


20.1 


13.0 


6.9 


4.5 


3.6 


2.6 


Class VI (less than 5,000) 


6.1 


3.1 


0.8 


0.4 


0.5 


0.3 


Total 2 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



1 Figures for 1981 and 1991 exclude Assam and Jammu and Kashmir. 

2 Figures may not add to totals because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994-95, Bombay, 1994, 48. 



629 



India: A Country Study 



Table 6. Population and Population Increase in Urban Agglomerates 
with More Than 1 Million Persons, 1971-91 



Urban Agglomerate , , . Increase, 1971-81 Increase, 1981-91 

^° (in thousands) .. . ,. 

(in percentages) (in percentages) 

Bombay 1 12,572 42.9 33.4 

Calcutta 10,916 23.9 18.7 

Delhi 8,375 57.1 46.2 

Madras 5,361 35.3 25.0 

Hyderabad 4,280 42.7 67.0 

Bangalore 4,087 75.6 39.9 

Ahmadabad 3,298 45.9 28.9 

Pune 2,485 48.6 47.4 

Kanpur 2,111 23.5 28.8 

Nagpur 1,661 40.8 36.2 

Lucknow 1,642 23.8 63.0 

Surat 1,517 87.4 64.2 

Jaipur 1,514 59.4 49.2 

Kochi 1,140 48.8 38.1 

Coimbatore 1,136 25.0 23.4 

Vadodara 1,115 67.4 42.5 

Indore 1,104 47.9 33.1 

Patna 1,099 66.7 19.6 

Madurai 1,094 27.6 20.5 

Bhopal 1,064 74.4 58.5 

Vishakhapatnam 1,052 66.1 74.3 

Varanasi 1,026 25.5 28.8 

Kalyan 1,014 36.7 645.4 

Ludhiana 1,012 51.3 66.7 

1 Greater Bombay. The population of the Bombay Municipal Corporation was 9,910,000. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994-95, Bombay, 1994, 50-52. 



630 



Appendix 



Table 7. Infant Mortality, Selected Years, 1911-95 



Period Deaths per 1,000 Live Births 



1911-15 204 

1916-20 219 

1921-25 7-~" 174 

1926-30 178 

1931-35 174 

1936-40 161 

1941^5 161 

1946-50 134 

1951-61 146 

1961-71 129 

1975-81 133 

1992 91 

1994 78 

1995 (estimate) 76 



Source: Based on information from Sudipto Mundle, "Recent Trends in the Condition 
of Children in India: A Statistical Profile," World Development [London], 12, No. 
3, 1984, 301; "World Population Data Sheet of the Population Reference 
Bureau, Inc.," Washington, 1992; United States, Bureau of the Census, World 
Population Profile: 1994, Washington, February 1994, A-28; and United States, 
Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, 1995, Washington, 1995, 196. 



Table 8. Health Care Services, Selected Fiscal Years, 1960-91 
(in thousands) 



Service 1960 1973 1984 1991 



Primary health centers 1 2.8 5.3 7.3 22.4 

Hospitals 4.0 4.0 7.4 11.2 

Dispensaries 9.9 10.8 21.9 27.4 

Hospital beds 2 186.0 406.0 625.0 811.0 

Physicians (registered) 76.0 172.4 297.0 394.0 

Nurses (registered) 32.7 94.0 171.0 n.a. : 



Figures for primary health centers relate to a fiscal year — see Glossary. 

2 Includes beds in dispensaries and other nonhospital health care facilities. 

3 n.a. — not available. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1988-89, Bombay, 1988, 175; and Tata Ser- 
vices, Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994- 
95, Bombay, 1994, 190. 



631 



India: A Country Study 



Table 9. Enrollment of School Children by Age, Selected School Years, 

1950-91 

(in percentages of total population in age-group) 



Primary School Middle School High School 

(ages 6-11) (ages 11-14) (ages 14-17) 



1950-51 42.6 12.7 5.3 

1955-56 52.8 16.5 7.4 

1960-61 62.4 22.5 10.6 

1965-66 76.7 30.8 16.2 

1970-71 76.4 34.2 n.a. 

1975-76 83.8 36.7 18.3 

1980-81 80.5 41.9 n.a. 

1985-86 93.1 52.0 n.a. 

1990-91 100.0 60.1 n.a. 



n.a. — not available . 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1988-89, Bombay, 1988, 171; and India, Minis- 
try of Information and Broadcasting, Research and Reference Division, India: 
A Reference Annual, 1988-89, New Delhi, December 1989, 73. 



632 



Appendix 



Table 10. Number of Schools and Teachers, Selected School Years, 
1950-51 to 1986-87 



Type 1950-51 1960-61 1970-71 1980-81 1986-87 



Schools 



Primary 


209,671 


330,399 


408,378 


485,538 


530,728 




lo.oyo 


AQ fifi^ 

4y,oo3 


yu.ouu 


1 1 A AAl 

1 10,44 / 


n.a. 


High 


7,288 


17,257 


36,700 


47,755 


206.669 3 




1,377 


2,738 


2,337 


8,708 


2,627 


Universities/ 

colleges 


27 


45 


100 


132 


159 


Total schools 


231,959 


400,102 


538,115 


658,580 


740,183 


Teachers 














537,918 


741,515 


1,376,176 


1,345,376 


1,530,938 


Middle 


85,496 


345,228 


n.a. 


830,649 


n.a. 


High 


126,504 


296,305 


948,887 2 


902,332 


2.148.239 3 


Technical 


28,283 


58,851 


33,454 


30,055 


53,161 


University/ 

college 


18,648 


41,759 


113,037 


185.558 


277,747 


Total teachers 


796,849 


1,483,658 


2,471,554 


3,293,970 


4,010,085 



n.a. — not available. 

2 Data for middle and high school combined for 1970-71 . 

3 Data for middle and high school combined for 1986-87. 



Source: Based on information from Tata News Services, Statistical Outline of India, 1988- 
89, Bombay, 1988, 171; India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 
Research and Reference Division, India: A Reference Annual, 1988-89, New 
Delhi, December 1989, 73; and India, Ministry of Planning, Department of 
Statistics, Central Statistical Organisation, Statistical Abstract, 1990, New Delhi, 
1990, 499-500. 



633 



India: A Country Study 



Table 11. Enrollment by Education Level, Selected School Years, 
1950-51 to 1990-91 
(in millions) 

. v Primary School Middle School High School 

(Classes I-V) (Classes VI-VHI) (Classes DC-XII) 



1950-51 19.2 3.1 1.2 

1955-56 25.2 4.3 1.9 

1960-61 35.0 6.7 2.9 

1965-66 50.5 10.5 5.0 

1970-71 57.0 13.3 6.6 

1975-76 65.7 16.0 7.4 

1980-81 73.8 20.7 10.8 

1985-86 86.5 28.1 15.1 

1 990-91 1 99.1 33.3 20.9 



Provisional. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1988-89, Bombay, 1988, 171; Tata Services, 
Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994—95, 
Bombay, 1994, 187; and India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 
Research and Reference Division, India: A Reference Annual, 1993, New Delhi, 
January 1994, 85. 



Table 12. Enrollment of School-Age Population by Gender, Selected 
School Years, 1960-61 to 1986-87 
(in percentages) 



Level and Gender 1960-61 1975-76 1980-31 1986-87 



Primary school 62.4 79.3 80.5 95.9 

Males 82.6 95.7 95.8 111.8 

Females 41.4 62.0 64.1 79.2 

Middle school 22.5 35.6 41.9 53.1 

Males 33.2 47.0 54.3 66.5 

Females 11.3 23.3 28.6 38.9 

High school 11.4 18.3 28.2 n.a. 1 

Males 18.2 25.6 40.8 n.a. 

Females 4.4 10.5 14.3 n.a. 

n.a. — not available. 



Source: Based on information from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cul- 
tural Organization, Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, National 
Studies: India, Bangkok, 1991, 12. 



634 



Appendix 



Table 13. Religious Affiliations, 1991 



Religious Group Adherents of Total Growth 



Number of Percentage Percentage 

of Total Growth 
Population since 1981 



Hindus 687,646,721 82.0 22.8 

Muslims 101,596,057 12.1 32.8 

Christians 19,640,284 2.3 16.9 

Sikhs 16,259,744 1.9 25.5 

Buddhists 6,387,500 0.8 35.9 

Jains 3,352,706 0.4 4.4 

Other religions 1 3,269,355 0.4 13.2 

Religion not stated 415,569 0.1 573.5 

Total 2 838,567,936 lOOO nTa? 



1 Sixty-three "other religions" were listed, including an imists (1,458), atheists (1,782), Jews (5,271), non-Christians 
(9,615) , pagans ( 1 ,71 1) , Zoroastrians (76,382) , and unclassified (212,652) . 

2 Total tabulated for religious affiliations is different from total tabulated for total national population. 
(846,302,688), which includes a projected figure forjammu and Kashmir where the census was not taken in 1991. 

s n.a. — not applicable. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Registrar General 
and Census Commissioner, Census of India 1991: Religion, Series-1, Paper-1 of 
1995, New Delhi, January 1995, x-xxiii, 18-60. 



Table 14. National Calendar and Government Holidays 

National Calendar 



Name of Month Dates on Gregorian Calendar 



Chaitra March 22-April 20 1 

Vaisakha April 21-May 21 

Jyaistha May 22-June 21 

Ashada June 22-July 22 

Sravana July 23-August 22 

Bhadra August 23-September 22 

Asvina September 23-October 22 

Kartika October 23-November 22 

Agrahayana November 23-December 21 

Pausa December 22-January 20 

Magha Janaury 21-February 19 

Phalguna February 20-March 21 



635 



India: A Country Study 



Table 14. ( Continued) National Calendar and Government Holidays 

NOTE: In 1957 the Indian government adopted a uniform, national calendar based 
on the Gregorian calendar and the Shaka Era (starting in A.D. 78) for civil 
government purposes. Using this calendar, the year A.D. 1995 is 1917 of the 
revised Shaka Era. The Shaka calendar has been used at least since the first 
century A.D. Because the Shaka calendar is based on solar and lunar obser- 
vations, some of the dates of holidays listed below are subject to change in a 
given year and from one part of India to another. The dates shown below 
are from 1993 (Shaka 1915). An unofficial but widely used calendar in 
North India dates from the ninth century A.D., is based on the Vikrama Era 
(beginning in 57 B.C.) , and starts in Chaitra. The Muslim calendar (starting 
with A.D. 622) is widely used among the Muslim population. The Buddhist 
calendar — based on the death of Buddha (483 B.C.) — and the Zcroastrian 
calendar (starting with 632 B.C.) are also used. 



Government Holidays, 1993 



Holiday 


Significance 

o 


Date 




Commemorates 1950 proclamation 
of the Republic of India 


January 26 2 


Holi 


Hindu spring festival 


March 8 


IdalFitr 


Marks end of the month of fasting 
during Ramadan (Ramzan), the 
ninth month on the Islamic cal- 
endar 


March 25 


Ramanavami 


Commemorates birthday of Ram 


April 1 


Mahavira Jayanti 


Mahavira' s birthday 


April 5 


Good Friday 


Commemorates death of Christ 


April 9 


Buddha Purnima 


Commemorates birth, death, and 
enlightenment of the Buddha 


May 6 


Id al Zuha (Bakr Id) 


Commemorates Abraham's williness 
to sacrifice his son Ishmael 


June 1 


Muharram 


Muslim New Year's 


Julyl 


Janmashtami 


Birthday of Krishna 


August 11 


Independence Day 


Marks independence from Britain 


August 15 2 


Milad-un-Nabi (Id-e-Milad) . . . 


Prophet Muhammad's birthday 


August 31 


Mahatma Gandhi's Birthday . . 


Commemorates birth of Mohandas 
K Gandhi 


October 2 2 


Dussehra (Vijaya Dasami) .... 


Commemorates triumph of Ram 
over Ravana, tenth day of Asvina 


October 24 


Dipavali (Diwali) 


Hindu festival of lights 


November 13 


Guru Nanak's Birthday 


Commemorates birth of Sikh leader 


November 29 


Christmas Day 


Commemorates birth of Christ 


December 25 2 



Starts on March 2 1 in leap year. 
Fixed date on Gregorian calendar. 



Source: Based on information from Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994, Calcutta, 
1994, 26-27; India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Directorate of 
Advertising and Visual Publicity, "List of Government of India Holidays for 
1993," New Delhi, 1993; and M.N. Saha and N.C. Lahiri, History of the Calendar 
in Different Countries Through the Ages, New Delhi, 1992, 254, 258. 



636 



Appendix 



Table 15. Vernacular Languages with More Than 1 Million Speakers, 

1991 

Estimated Number States and Union Territories 

°^ ° of Speakers Where Use Is Most Prevalent 



HINDI 153,729,062 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra 

Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh, Delhi, 
Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, 
Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, 
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, 
Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar 
Pradesh, West Bengal 

TELUGU 44,707,697 Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya 

Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, 
Pondicherry, West Bengal 

BENGALI 44,521,533 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, 

Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, 
Orissa, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West 
Bengal 

MARATHI 41,723,893 Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Karna- 

taka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, 

TAMIL 37,592,794 Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra 

Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maha- 
rashtra, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu 

URDU 28,600,428 Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, 

Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Kar- 
nataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Ra- 
jasthan, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal 

GUJARATI 25,656,274 Daman and Diu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, 

Madhya Pradesh 

MALAYALAM 21,917,430 Kerala, Lakshadweep, Maharashtra 

KANNADA 21,595,019 Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharash- 

tra, Tamil Nadu, 

ORIYA 19,726,745 Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya 

Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal 

Bhojpuri 14,340,564 Assam, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar 

Pradesh 

PUNJABI 13,900,202 Bihar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, 

Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kash- 
mir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, 
Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh 

ASSAMESE 8,958,977 Assam 

Chhatisgarhi 6,693,445 Madhya Pradesh 

Magadhi 6,638,495 Bihar, West Bengal 

Manipuri (Meithei) 6,121,922 Meghalaya 

Marwari 4,714,094 Rajasthan 

Santali 3,693,558 Assam, Bihar, Orissa, Tripura, West Ben- 

gal 

KASHMIRI 2,421,760 Jammu and Kashmir 

Rajasthani 2,093,557 Rajasthan 

Gondi 1,548,070 Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, 

Maharashtra 



637 



India: A Country Study 



Table 15. (Continued) Vernacular Languages with More Than 1 
Million Speakers, 1991 

T Estimated Number States and Union Territories 

£ ua ° e of Speakers Where Use Is Most Prevalent 



KONKANI 1,522,684 Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, 

Dogri-Kangri 1,298,885 Jammu and Kashmir 

NEPALI 1,286,824 Sikkim, West Bengal 

Garhwali 1,227,151 Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh 

Pahari 1,269,651 Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir 

Bhili 1,250,312 Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Haryana, 

Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajas- 
than 

Oraon (Kurukh) 1,240,395 Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal 

Kumaoni 1,234,939 Assam, Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, 

Uttar Pradesh 

SINDHI 1,204,678 Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, 

Raj as than 

Lamani (Lambadi) 1,203,338 Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal 

Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya 
Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil 
Nadu, West Bengal 

Tulu 1,156,950 Karnataka, Kerala 

Bagri 1,055,607 Punjab, Rajasthan 



Note: Languages shown in UPPER CASE print are Scheduled Languages (see Glos- 
sary). The other Scheduled Language — Sanskrit — has an estimated 2,200 speak- 
ers. Some observers estimate that more than 28 million people use English as a 
first, second, or third language with varying degrees of proficiency. 

Source: Based on information from Hindustan Year-Book and Who's Who, 1994, Calcutta, 
1994, Part II, 207-208; Barbara E Grimes, ed., Ethnologue: Languages of the 
World, Dallas, 1992, 532-65; and Kumar Suresh Singh, ed., People of India, 11: 
An Anthropological Atlas, New Delhi, 1993, 77. 



638 



Appendix 



Table 16. Growth of Gross National Product, Fiscal Years 1951-89 
(in percentage change from previous year at 
constant FY 1980 prices) 



Period GNP 1 GNP per Capita 



1951-55 3.6 1.7 

1956-60 3.9 1.9 

1961-65 2.3 0.1 

1966-68 2.2 -0.1 

1969-73 3.3 0.9 

1974-79 3.1 2.6 

1980-84 5.4 3.2 

1985-89 5.5 3.3 



GNP — gross national product (see Glossary). 

Source: Based on information from Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile: India, 
Nepal, 1993-94, London, 1993, 14. 



Table 1 7. Gross Domestic Product by Sector, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1987-92 
(in percent share) 

Sector 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1 



Primary (agriculture, 

forestry, fishing, mining, 
quarrying) 


32.5 


34.8 


33.8 


33.5 


32.8 


32.3 


Secondary (manufacturing, 
construction, electricity, 
other) 


28.8 


26.9 


27.0 


27.7 


27.4 


26.9 


Trade, transportation, and 


17.2 


17.5 


18.5 


18.0 


18.0 


18.3 


Real estate and finance 


9.4 


9.5 


9.9 


10.7 


10.7 


10.9 


Services, including public 
administration and 
defense 


12.1 


11.3 


10.8 


11.1 


11.1 


11.6 


TOTAL 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 


100.0 



Provisional. 



Source: Based on information from Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Profile: India, 
Nepal, 1994-95, London, 1995, 21. 



639 



India: A Country Study 



Table 18. Government Income and Expenditure, Fiscal Years 1981, 
1989, and 1992 1 
(in billions of rupees at current prices) 





1981 


1989 


1992 


Direct taxes 


44.6 


113.5 


210.6 


Indirect taxes 


200.9 


668.8 


994.3 


Profits 


-10.5 


-23.2 


-28.4 


Interest receipts 


11.1 


36.3 


64.6 


Property receipts 


9.8 


33.8 


62.0 


Miscellaneous 


3.9 


18.7 


31.4 


Total income 


259.8 


847.9 


1,334.5 


Total outlay 


241.8 


1,044.3 


1,537.2 


Savings 3 


17.9 


-176.4 


-202.7 


Savings as percentage of GNP 4 


1.1 


-3.9 


-2.9 



Including administrative departments and departmental enterprises, excluding railroads and telecommunica- 
tions. 

2 For value of the rupee — see Glossary. 

3 As published. 

4 GNP — gross national product (see Glossary) . 



Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1992-93, Bombay, 1992, 20; and Tata Services, 
Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994-95, 
Bombay, 1994, 22. 



640 



Appendix 



Table 19. Balance of Trade, Selected Fiscal Years, 1980-93 
(in billions of rupees) 1 



Year Imports Exports Balance" 



1980 125.5 67.1 -58.4 

1985 196.6 109.0 -87.6 

1986 200.9 124.5 -76.4 

1987 222.4 156.7 -65.7 

1988 282.4 202.3 -80.0 

1989 353.3 276.6 -76.7 

1990 432.0 325.5 -106.5 

1991 478.5 440.4 -38.1 

1992 633.8 536.9 -96.9 

1993 4 728.1 695.5 -32.6 



For value of the rupee — see Glossary. 

2 Including reexports. 

3 Figures may not add to balances because of rounding. 

4 Provisional figures. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1992-93, Bombay, 1992, 93; and Tata Services, 
Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994-95, 
Bombay, 1994, 101. 



641 



India: A Country Study 



Table 20. Principal Exports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 (in billions of 
United States dollars) 



Commodity 



1990 



Value 



Percentage 



1991 

Value Percentage 



Agriculture and allied products 

Cashew kernels 

Coffee 

Fish and fish products 

Oil meals 

Raw cotton 

Rice 

Spices 

Sugar 

Tea and mate 

Tobacco 

Total agriculture and allied 
products 

Ore and minerals 

Iron ore 

Other ore and minerals 

Total ore and minerals .... 

Manufactured goods 

Chemicals 

Handicrafts 

Gems and jewelry 

Other handicrafts 

Total handicrafts 

Industrial machinery 

Jute manufactures 

Leather and leather 

products 

Ready-made garments 

Textiles 

Total manufactured 

goods 

Mineral fuels and lubricants 

Petroleum, oil, and lubri- 
cants 

Other mineral fuels and 

lubricants 

Total mineral fuels and 
lubricants 

Other commodities 

TOTAL 1 



0.3 
0.1 
0.5 
0.3 
0.5 
0.3 
0.1 
0.2 
0.6 
0.2 

3.1 

0.6 
0.3 
0.8 

1.4 

2.9 
0.5 
3.4 
2.2 
0.2 

1.5 
2.2 
1.2 

12.1 



0.5 
0.0 



0.5 
0.3 



1.4 
0.8 
2.9 
1.9 
2.6 
1.4 
0.7 
0.1 
3.3 
0.8 

15.0 

3.2 
1.4 
4.6 

7.8 

16.1 
2.9 
19.0 
11.9 
0.9 

8.0 
12.3 
6.5 

66.4 



2.9 
0.0 



0.3 
0.1 
0.6 
0.4 
0.1 
0.3 
0.2 
0.1 
0.5 
0.2 

2.5 

0.6 
02 
0.8 

1.6 

2.7 
0.7 
3.4 
2.2 
0.2 

1.3 
2.2 
1.3 

12.2 



0.4 



0.0 0.0 0.1 



1.5 
0.7 
3.3 
2.1 
0.7 
1.7 
0.8 
0.4 
2.7 
0.9 

14.8 

3.3 
1.3 
4.6 

8.9 

15.3 
3.7 
19.0 
12.5 
0.9 

7.1 
12.3 
7.3 

6.8 



2.3 
0.1 



2.9 
0.2 



0.4 
0.2 



2.4 
10.2 



18.1 



100.0 



17.9 



100.0 



642 



Appendix 



Table 20. (Continued) Principal Exports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 (in 
billions of United States dollars) 

1992 1993 

Commodity 

Value Percentage Value Percentage 



Agriculture and allied products 



Cashew kernels 


0.3 


1.4 


0.3 


1.5 


Coffee 


0.1 


0.7 


0.2 


0.8 


Fish and fish products 


0.6 


3.2 


0.8 


3.6 




0.5 


2.9 


0.7 


3.3 


Raw cotton 


0.1 


0.3 


0.2 


0.9 


Cereals 


0.3 


1.9 


0.4 


1.9 


Spices 


0.1 


0.7 


0.2 


0.8 


Fruits and vegetables 


0.1 


0.6 


0.1 


0.6 


Tea 


0.3 


1.8 


0.3 


1.4 


Tobacco (unmanufactured) . . . 


0.1 


0.7 


0.1 


0.5 


Total agriculture and allied 
products 


2.5 


14.2 


3.3 


15.3 


Ore and minerals 










Iron ore 


0.4 


2.1 


0.4 


1.9 




\ 


8 


ft 9 


9 




ft 9 


i ft 


ft 9 


i ft 


Total ore and minerals 


ft 7 


3.y 


ft Q 

u.y 


3.o 


^Manufactured goods 










Drugs, pharmaceuticals, and 
fine chemicals 


0.5 


2.9 


0.6 


2.9 


Dyes and coal tar chemicals. . . . 


0.3 


1.8 


0.4 


1.6 


Electronic goods 


0.2 


1.1 


0.3 


1.4 


Gems and jewelry 


3.1 


16.6 


4.0 


18.0 


Han dicraf ts 


0.9 


4.7 


0.9 


4.2 


Iron and steel, primary and 
semifinished 


0.2 


0.9 


0.4 


1.9 


Leather and leather products 
(including footwear) 


1.3 


6.9 


1.3 


6.0 


Machinery and instruments. . . . 


0.5 


2.9 


0.6 


2.9 


Metal manufactures 


0.6 


3.0 


0.7 


3.1 


Ready-made garments 


2.4 


12.9 


2.6 


11.6 


Textiles, cotton yarns, fabrics. . . 


1.4 


7.3 


1.5 


6.9 


Transportation equipment .... 


0.5 




0.6 


_£6 


Total manufactured goods . . 


11.9 


13.9 


16.8 


83.1 


Crude oil and petroleum products 


0.5 


2.6 


0.4 


1.8 


Other commodities 


0.2 


0.9 


0.1 


0.8 


TOTAL 1 


18.5 


100.0 


22.2 


100.0 



Figures may not add to totals because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Eco- 
nomic Survey, 1992-93, New Delhi, 1993, 102; and India, Ministry of Finance, 
Economic Division, Economic Survey, 1994-95, New Delhi, 1994, 95-96. 



643 



India: A Country Study 



Table 21. Principal Imports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 (in billions of 
United States dollars) 



Commodity 



1990 

Value Percentage 



1991 

Value Percentage 



Bulk imports 

Food and allied products 

Cereals 

Edible oils 

Pulses 

Total food and allied 
products 

Fuels 

Petroleum, oil, and lubri- 
cants 

Coal 

Total Fuels 

Ore and minerals 

Iron and steel 

Nonferrous metals 

Ores and metal scrap .... 

Total ore and minerals. 

Fertilizers 

Paper, board, and pulp 

Total bulk imports. . 

Nonbulk imports 

Capital goods 

Export-related imports 

Pearls and precious stones 

Chemicals 

Textile yarn, fabric, and 
other 

Cashew nuts 

Total export-related 
imports 

Other nonbulk items 

Professional instruments 
and other 

Chemicals 

Plastics and resins 

Nonmetallic minerals .... 

Total other nonbulk 
items 

Total nonbulk 

imports 

Other imports 

TOTAL 1 



0.1 
0.2 
0.3 

0.6 



6.0 
0.5 
6.5 

1.2 
0.6 
0.9 
2.7 
1.0 
0.5 
11.2 

5.8 

2.1 
1.3 

0.3 
0.1 

3.8 



0.6 
0.5 
0.6 
0.1 

1.8 

11.3 
1.6 



0.4 
0.8 
1.1 

2.3 



25.1 
1.8 
26.9 

4.9 
2.5 
3.5 

10.9 
4.1 
2.1 

46.3 

24.2 

8.7 
5.3 

1.0 
0.3 

15.3 



2.5 
2.1 
2.5 
0.5 

7.6 

47.1 
6.5 



0.1 
0.1 
0.1 

0.3 



5.4 
0.4 
5.8 

0.8 
0.3 
0.5 
1.6 
1.0 
0.3 
9.0 

4.2 

2.0 
1.4 

0.1 
0.1 

3.6 



0.4 
0.4 
0.6 
0.1 

1.5 

9.3 
1.2 



0.4 
0.5 
0.5 

1.4 



27.6 
2.2 
29.8 

4.1 
1.8 
2.4 
8.3 
4.9 
1.7 
46.1 

21.8 

10.1 
7.1 

0.7 
0.6 

18.5 



2.1 
2.2 
2.9 
0.5 

7.7 

47.9 
5.9 



24.2 



100.0 



19.5 



100.0 



644 



Appendix 



Table 21. (Continued) Principal Imports, Fiscal Years 1990-93 (in 
billions of United States dollars) 

1992 1993 

Commodity 

Value Percentage Value Percentage 



Food and allied products 





0.1 


0.6 


0.2 


0.7 




0.3 


1.5 


0.1 


0.4 


Edible oils 


0.1 


0.6 


0.1 


0.7 


Pulses 


0.1 


0.5 


0.2 


0.8 


Total food and allied 










products 


0.7 


3.2 


0.6 


2.4 


Fuels 










Petroleum, oil, and lubri- 












5.9 


27.0 


5.8 


24.7 


Coal 


0.5 


1. 1 


0.5 


2.0 




6.4 


29.2 


6.3 


26.7 


Fertilizers 


1.0 


4.5 


0.8 


3.6 


Paper board, paper manufactures, 










and newsprint 


0.2 


0.8 


0.2 


1.0 


Capital goods 










Machinery (except for electrical 










machine tools) 


1.7 


7.6 


2.2 


9.4 


Electrical machinery 


0.8 


3.8 


0.8 


3.4 


Transportation equipment .... 


A C 

U.D 


1. 1 


1.3 


0.4 




1.3 


5.8 


1.4 


6.0 


Total capital goods 


4.3 


19.3 


5.7 


24.2 


Other items 










Pearls, precious stones, and semi- 










precious stones 


2.4 


11.2 


2.6 


11.3 


Professional instruments, opti- 










cal goods, and other 


0.5 


2.3 


0.5 


2.1 




2.0 


9.2 


2.0 


8.5 


Iron and steel 


0.7 


3.3 


0.8 


3.4 


Nonferrous metals 


0.4 


1.8 


0.5 


2.0 


Total other items 


6.0 


27.8 


6.4 


27.3 




3.0 


13.8 


3.1 


13.1 


TOTAL 1 


21.6 


100.0 


23.3 


100.0 



1 Figures may not add to totals because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Eco- 
nomic Survey, 1992-93, New Delhi, 1993, 100; India, Ministry of Finance, Eco- 
nomic Division, Economic Survey, 1994-95, New Delhi, 1994, 97-98. 



645 



India: A Country Study 



© © oO i-h 

od in o i>" 



N * » » ^ 



t> Of) 00 
© © « 



N N N 00 

oi ir! ci i— < 



r^0O0OGMr--<GNi©CM 



I> © J> 

<£ ao 



© p p CO 
ifj in" i—5 t£> 



O CM 00 

CM CM r-i 



00 © 
O CM 



if) 00 CNT i> 



00 O rH 

01 w id 



rH rH (M (M 



© of) 

csi d 



m in 
if! in 



© if) 

Of) r-H 



00 CNf 

d <o 



03 to O 



►it o 



C GO 

J g 



s o 



646 



Appendix 



cm in cm 

CM H rH 



m oq 
on cm 



c 



cm a> 
to d 



oo m qo 



O0 C> CTi t» 
I> CM o d 



< — • >— ' CM CO « — 1 



(fi O of) 
O <— < CM 



i> d 



'i <d 

S: (J) 
o 

8 cn 



m r— 
on cm i-h 



on .-< 
on on 



£3 S 



in 

cm on i — * 



CM oo 
© d ^ 



S 
6 
o 

.S c 

% & 

o S 



2 o « 
« a. 3 

U 3 _<g 



^ C 

.5 •§ 
S 

2 S 

<*-( o 

1§ 

I 8 
5 c 



'5 8 u 5 ^ 

3 W J= ^ . 



C to 



3 5 



co O O P 



II 

£0 



U o 

§! 

a. e 



S So So 5 S 

3 >r A .&> 3 



CQ 



647 



India: A Country Study 



Table 23. Balance of Payments, Fiscal Years 1988-93 
(in billions of United States dollars) 

1988 1989 1990 2 1991 2 1992 1993 3 



Current Account 

Exports f.o.b. 4 14.3 

Imports c.i.f. 5 23.6 

Trade balance -9.4 

Invisibles (net) 6 1.4 

Current account bal- 
ance -8.0 

Capital account 

External aid (net) 2.2 

Commercial borrowings 

(net) 1.9 

Nonresident deposits 

(net) 2.5 

Other capital flows 8 .... 1.4 

Capital account bal- 
ance 8.1 

IMF 9 borrowings (net) .... -1.8 

Official reserves 10 +1.0 

1 Figures may not add to totals because of rounding. 

2 Provisional data. 

3 "Quick estimates." 

4 Free on board. 

5 Cargo, insurance, and freight. 

5 Includes nonfactor services, investment income, private transfers, and grants. 

7 Includes India Development Bonds. 

8 Includes delayed export receipts, errors and omissions, and, for FY 1992, errors and omissions arising out of dual 
exchange rates. 

9 International Monetary Fund — see Glossary. 
10 Minus means increase, plus means decrease. 

Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Eco- 
nomic Survey, 1992-93, New Delhi, 1993, 96; and India, Ministry of Finance, 
Economic Division, Economic Survey, 1994-95, New Delhi, 1994, 87. 



17.0 


18.5 


18.3 


18.9 


22.70 


24.4 


27.9 


21.1 


23.2 


23.99 


-7.5 


-9.4 


-2.8 


-4.4 


-1 9Q 


0.6 


-0.2 


1.6 


0.8 


0.97 


-6.8 


-9.7 


-1.2 


-3.5 


-0.32 


1.9 


2.2 


3.0 


1.9 


1.70 


1.8 


2.2 


1.5 7 


-0.4 


0.84 


2.4 


1.5 


0.3 


2.0 


0.94 


0.9 


2.3 


0.3 


-0.2 


2.15 


7.0 


8.4 


4.8 


4.3 


9.18 


-0.9 


1.2 


0.8 


1.3 


0.19 


+0.7 


+1.3 


-3.6 


-0.7 


-8.87 



648 



Appendix 



Table 24. Share of Public and Private Sectors in Gross Domestic 
Product (GDP) 1 , Fiscal Years 1981 and 1992 
(in trillions of rupees at current prices) 

1981 1992 3 

Sector 

Value Percentage Value Percentage 



GDP (at factor cost) 



Public sector 


0.3 


20.8 


1.7 


27.2 


Private sector 


1.1 


79.2 


4.6 


72.8 


Total GDP (at factor cost) 


1.4 


100.0 


6.3 


100.0 


ross domestic savings 










Public sector 


0.1 


21.7 


0.2 


9.5 


Private sector 


0.3 


78.3 


1.4 


90.5 


Total gross domestic savings 3 .... 


0.3 


100.0 


1.6 


100.0 



Gross domestic capital 



Public sector 


0.2 


41.9 


0.7 


41.4 


Private sector 


0.2 


58.1 


1.0 


58.6 


Total gross domestic capital 4 .... 


0.4 


100.0 


1.8 


100.0 



1 GDP— see Glossary. 

2 For value of the rupee — see Glossary. 

3 Provisional figures. 

4 Figures may not add to totals because of rounding. 

Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1992-93, Bombay, 1992, 20; and Tata Services, 
Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994-95, 
Bombay, 1994, 22. 



649 



India: A Country Study 



Table 25. Production of Selected Industrial Products, Selected Fiscal 

Years, 1970-92 

Product Unit 1970 1980 1990 1992 



Air conditioners 












(room) 


thousands of units 


11.0 


28.0 


39.2 


35.1 


Aluminum 


thousands of tons 


169.0 


199.0 


449.0 


483.0 


Aluminum conduc- 












tors 


-do- 


64.2 


86.0 


67.6 


24.1 


Cars, jeeps, and Land 
Rovers 


thousands of vehicles 


46.7 


49.4 


220.8 


198.1 


Caustic soda 


thousands of tons 


371.0 


578.0 


981.0 


1,079.0 


Cement 


millions of tons 


14.3 


18.6 


48.8 


54.3 


Commercial vehicles. . . . 


thousands of vehicles 


41. Z 


71 7 
/ 1 . / 


143. D 


13Z.0 




thousands of tons 


y.o 




AC\ C 

4U.O 


4o.3 




billions of square 
meters 


7 ft 
/.o 


Q fi 

y.o 


17 ft 
1 /.o 


ion 


Diesel engines 












(stationary) 


thousands of units 


65.0 


174.0 


158.0 


165.0 




millions of tons 


4.6 


6.8 


13.5 


15.2 




-do- 


1. 1 


1 A 

1.4 


1.4 


1.3 


Machinery for cement 
plants 


billions of rupees 1 


0.0 


0.3 


2.8 


1.8 


Machinery for cotton 
textiles 


Kio- 


0.3 


3.0 


9.5 


10.1 


Machinery for sugar 
mills 


-do- 


0.1 


0.2 


0.9 


1.0 


Machine tools 


-do 


0.4 


1.7 


7.9 


9.7 


Paper and board 


millions of tons 


0.8 


1.1 


2.1 


2.2 


Pig iron 


-do- 


7.0 


9.6 


12.1 


13.2 


Power transformers 


millions of kilovolt- 
amperes 


8.1 


19.5 


36.6 


34.1 


Refrigerators 


thousands of units 


0.1 


0.3 


1.3 


1.0 


Soda ash 


millions of tons 


0.4 


0.6 


1.4 


1.39 


Steel ingots 


-do- 


6.1 


10.3 


13.5 


15.2 



For value of the rupee — see Glossary. 



Source: Based on information from Tata Services, Department of Economics and Sta- 
tistics, Statistical OutUne of India, 1992-93, Bombay, 1992, 71-73; and Tata Ser- 
vices, Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1994- 
95, Bombay, 1994, 79-81. 



650 



Appendix 



Table 26. Area Planted in Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1950-90 
(in thousands of hectares) 

Crop 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1 



Food grains 
Cereals 



Rice 


30 810 


34 128 


37,592 


40,152 


42,687 


Wheat 


9,746 


12,927 


18,241 


22,279 


24,167 


Coarse grains 


37,674 


44.963 


45,950 


41.779 


36.319 


Total cereals 


78,230 


92,018 


101,783 


104,210 


103,173 


Pulses 


19,091 


23.563 


22.534 


22.457 


24.662 


Total food grains . . . 


97,321 


115,581 


124,317 


126,667 


127,835 


Percent change 


n.a. 2 


19 


8 


2 


1 


Oilseeds 












Peanuts 


4,494 


6,463 


7,326 


6,801 


8,309 


Rapeseed and mustard 
seed 


2,071 


2,883 


3,323 


4,113 


5,700 


Cottonseed 


3 






7,823 


7,355 


Sesame 


2,204 


2,169 


2,450 


2,472 


2,595 


Soybeans 








392 


2,365 


Sunflower 








119 


1,642 


Other oilseeds 


1.958 


2,255 


2,336 


4,072 


1,977 


Total oilseeds 


10,727 


13,770 


15,435 


25,792 


29,943 


Sugarcane 


1,707 


2,415 


2,615 


2,667 


3,686 


Cotton 


5,882 


7,610 


7,605 


7,823 


7,440 


Jute 


571 


629 


749 


941 


778 



Preliminary. 

2 n.a. — not available. 

3 — means negligible. 



Source: Based on information from United States, Embassy in New Delhi, Annual Com- 
modity Report, Oilseeds and Products, 1992, New Delhi, 1992, 2, 13, 18, 21, 24, 32- 
33; India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Economic Survey, 1991-92, 2: 
Sectoral Developments, New Delhi, 1992, S17-S19; India, Ministry of Planning, 
Department of Statistics, Central Statistical Organisation, Statistical Abstract 
1990, India, New Delhi, 1991, 49; and India, Ministry of Information and 
Broadcasting, Research and Reference Division, India 1993: A Reference 
Annual, New Delhi, 1994, 398-99. 



651 



India: A Country Study 



Table 27. Land Use, Selected Fiscal Years, 1970-87 
(in millions of hectares) 



Category 


1970 


1980 


1985 


1987 


Percentage of 
Area Classified, 
iyo / 


Forest 


63.9 


67.4 


67.0 


66.9 


19.6 


Not available for cultivation 












Nonagricultural uses 


n.a. 1 


n.a. 


20.5 


20.8 


6.1 


Barren and uncultivable 


n.a. 


n.a. 


20.2 


20.4 


6.0 


Total not available for culti- 
vation 


44.6 


39.6 


40.7 


41.2 


12.1 


Other uncultivated land 












Permanent pastures and grazing 
lands 


13.3 


12.0 


12.0 


11.9 


3.5 


Tree crops and groves 


4.3 


3.5 


3.5 


3.5 


1.0 


Cultivable wasteland 


17.5 


16.7 


15.7 


15.6 


4.6 


Fallow land 


19.4 


24.6 


24.9 


29.6 


8.7 


Total other uncultivated 
land 


54.5 


56.8 


56.1 


60.6 


17.8 


Cropped area 












Net area sown 


140.8 


140.0 


140.9 


136.2 


39.9 


Area sown more than once per 

year 


25.0 


32.6 


37.0 


36.7 


10.7 


Total cropped area 


165.8 


172.6 


177.9 


172.9 


50.6 


Total area classified 


328.8 


336.4 


341.7 


341.6 


100.0 



n.a. — not available. 



Source: Based on information from United States, Embassy in New Delhi, India: Agri- 
cultural Situation, Annual Report, 1992, Washington, 1992, table 11; India, Min- 
istry of Planning, Central Statistical Organization, Department of Statistics, 
Statistical Abstract 1990, India, New Delhi, 1991, 46-47; and Tata Services, 
Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 1992-93, 
Bombay, 1992, 56. 



652 



Appendix 



Table 28. Harvested and Irrigated Areas, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1970-90 
(in millions of hectares) 



Area 



1970 



1980 



1987 



1990 



Harvested area 

Gross 165.8 172.6 172.9 182.5 

Net 140.1 140.0 136.2 143.0 

Cropping intensity (percentage) 1 118.4 123.3 127.0 127.6 

Irrigated area 

Gross 38.2 49.8 56.2 59.0 

Net 31.1 38.7 43.1 47.0 

Irrigation intensity (percentage) 2 23.0 29.0 33.0 32.3 

1 Gross area harvested divided by net area harvested. 

2 Gross irrigated area divided by gross harvested area. 

Source: Based on information from United States, Embassy in New Delhi, India: Agri- 
cultural Situation, Annual Report, 1992, Washington, 1992, table 10; and Tata 
Services, Department of Economics and Statistics, Statistical Outline of India, 
1992-93, Bombay, 1992, 56-57. 



Table 29. Production and Sale of Selected Mechanized Agricultural 
Equipment, SelectedFiscalYears, 1986-91 
(in number of units) 



Equipment 1986 1987 1988 1991 



Tractors 

Produced 80,004 92,092 109,987 151,759 

Sold 78,823 93,157 110,323 150,582 

Power tillers 

Produced 3,325 3,005 4,798 7,580 

Sold 3,209 3,097 4,678 7,528 

Combine harvesters 

Produced 57 149 109 187 

Sold 57 144 110 189 



Source: Based on information from Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994, New 
Delhi, 1994, 236; and India, Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Agricul- 
ture and Co-operation, Annual Report, 1994-95, New Delhi, 1994, 67. 



653 



India: A Country Study 



Table 30. Yield of Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 1950-90 
(in kilograms per hectare) 



Crop 


1950 


1960 


1970 


1980 


1990 1 


Food grains 












Cereals 












Rice 


668 


1,013 


1,123 


1,336 


1,751 


Wheat 


663 


851 


1,306 


1,630 


2,274 


Coarse grains 


408 


528 


665 


695 


n.a. 2 


All cereals 3 


542 


693 


949 


1,142 


1,573 


Pulses 


441 


539 


524 


473 


576 


All food grains 3 . . 


522 


710 


872 


1,023 


1,382 


Oilseeds 












Peanuts 


775 


744 


834 


736 


919 


Rapeseed and mustard 
seed 


368 


467 


594 


560 


900 




202 


147 


232 


180 


n.a. 


Soybeans 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


1,128 


1,022 


Sunflower 


n.a. 


n.a. 


n.a. 


555 


540 


Other oilseeds 


470 


505 


604 


305 


n.a. 


All oilseeds 3 


481 


507 


579 


532 


769 


Sugarcane 


33,421 


46,133 


48,324 


57,836 


65,000 


Cotton 


88 


125 


106 


152 


224 


Jute 


1,040 


1,180 


1,186 


1,245 


1,803 



Preliminary. 

2 n.a. — not available. 

3 Numbers in this row represent weighted averages rather than totals. 



Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Eco- 
nomic Survey, 1991-92, 2: Sectoral Developments, New Delhi, 1992, 5-18; and 
United States, Embassy in New Delhi, Annual Commodity Report, Oilseeds and 
Products, 1992, New Delhi, 1992, 22, 25. 



654 



Appendix 



Table 31. Production of Principal Crops, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1950-90 
(in thousands of tons) 

Crop 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1 



Food grains 
Cereals 



Rice 


20,576 


34,574 


42,225 


53,631 


74,600 


Wheat 


6,462 


10,997 


23,832 


36,313 


54,500 


Coarse grains 


15,376 


23,743 


30,547 


29,018 


33,100 


Total cereals . . . 


42,414 


69,314 


96,604 


118,962 


162,200 




8 411 


12.704 


11 818 


10,627 


14 100 


Total food 












grains. 


50,825 


82,018 


108,422 


129,589 


176,300 


Oilseeds 












Peanuts 


3,481 


4,812 


6,111 


5,005 


7,600 


Rapeseed and mus- 












tard seed 


762 


1,347 


1,976 


2,002 


5,200 


Cottonseed 


2 






2,700 


3,900 




445 


318 


568 


446 


810 


Soybeans 








442 


2,400 


Sunflower 








66 


889 


Other oilseeds 


470 


505 


604 


1,242 


1,001 


Total oilseeds 


5,158 


6,982 


9,259 


11,903 


21,800 


Sugarcane 


57,050 


111,410 


126,368 


154,248 


240,300 


Cotton 


600 


1,004 


809 


1,326 


1,666 


Jute 


595,000 


744,000 


882,000 


1,170,000 


1,404,000 



Preliminary. 

— means negligible. 



Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Finance, Economics Division, 
Economic Survey, 1991-92, 2: Sectoral Developments, New Delhi, 1992, S16; and 
United States, Embassy in New Delhi, India: Agriculture Situation, Annual Report, 
1992, Washington, 1992, table 19. 



655 



India: A Country Study 



Table 32. Area under High-Yielding Varieties, Selected Fiscal Years, 

1950-90 



Category 1960 1970 1980 1990 1 



Area sown with high-yielding varieties 



(millions of hectares) 


1.9 


15.4 


43.1 


63.9 


Seeds 










Production, breeder seeds (millions of 
kilograms) 


n.a. 2 


n.a. 


527 


n.a. 


Fertilizer consumption 










Total (millions of tons) 


0.3 


2.2 


5.5 


12.6 


Per hectare (units) 


1.9 


13.1 


31.8 


68.8 


Cooperative credit (billions of rupees) 


214.4 


678.8 


2,216.3 


3,187.0 


Area sown in rice (millions of hectares) 


n.a. 


5.6 


18.2 


28.1 


Percentage of area sown in rice 


n.a. 


14.9 


45.3 


65.9 


Area sown in wheat (millions of 

hectares) 


n.a. 


6.5 


13.5 


20.4 


Percentage of area sown in wheat 


n.a. 


35.6 


60.6 


85.0 


Area sown for coarse grains (millions 


n.a. 


3.3 


8.8 


15.4 


Percentage of area sown in coarse 

grains 


n.a. 


7.2 


21.0 


42.2 



Preliminary. 

n.a. — not available. 



Source: Based on information from India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 
Research and Reference Division, India 1993: A Reference Annual, New Delhi, 
January 1994, 392; and India, Ministry of Finance, Economic Division, Eco- 
nomic Survey, 1991-92, 2: Sectoral Developments, New Delhi, 1992, S22. 



656 



Appendix 



t> ID 
CM j> 
CM oO 



I I I I I 



I I 



I I I I 



I I 



r- 1 on <£> 



I I I I I 



I I I 



CM J> 
CM m 



I I I I I 



I 2 



CM 00 



I I 



I I I I I 



CM 00 
CM t}< 



CM I> 

JS °o 



CM ^ 
CM I> 



I I 



CM . 00 



.-I CO CM oo CM ifl 



on o 



CO CM 

cm m 



00 o> 



CM 



on rH 

1-1 OO 



-^ I> ifl O) CM 
OO CM of) >-< t}3 



CM O r-H <£,' 



CM °0 00 00 



So £ CM 00 



I I 2d I 



I I 



^ o 



I I I 



& 

a 

U j> 



o 
U 



657 



India: A 



Country Study 



r— i GO 



go O 

GO 



1—1 GO *0 



«>S *S 8 3 



I -GO" 



I I 



I I I I 



I I I 



I I I 



I I 



I I 



I I 



I I 



I I I I I I 



I I 



I I 



1 5 



658 



Appendix 




659 



India: A Country Study 



Table 34. Order of Battle for the Armed Forces, 1994 



Branch and Units Personnel or Unit 



Army 

Personnel 940,000 

Regional commands : . . . 5 

Corps 12 

Armored divisions 2 

Tank regiments 55 

Mechanized divisions 1 

Infantry divisions 22 

Battalions 355 

Mountain infantry divisions 10 

Independent brigades 14 

Airborne/commando 1 

Armored 5 

Artillery 3 

Regiments 290 

Infantry 7 

Mountain 1 

Surface-to-surface missile brigade 1 

Air defense brigades 6 

Engineer brigades 3 

Army aviation 

Air observation squadrons 8 

Antitank/ transport squadrons 6 

Navy 

Personnel 

Line and staff 48,000 

Naval air force 5,000 

Marines 1,000 

Total navy personnel 54,000 

Commands 3 

Fleets 2 

Naval bases 9 

Air Force 

Personnel 110,000 

Air commands 5 

Reserve forces personnel 

Territorial Army 36,456 

National Cadet Corps 1,120,000 

Civil Defence Volunteers 336,000 

Home Guards 472,098 

Total reserve forces personnel 1,964,554 



660 



Appendix 



Table 34. (Continued) Order of Battle for the Armed Forces, 1994 



Branch and Units Personnel or Unit 



Paramilitary forces personnel 

Assam Rifles 40,000 

Border Security Force 90,000 

Coast Guard Organisation 3,173 

Central Industrial Security Force 83,781 

Central Reserve Police Force 90,000 

Defence Security Force 30,000 

Indo-Tibetan Border Police 14,000 

Rashtriya Rifles 5,000 

National Security Guards 83,781 

Provincial Armed Constabulary 250,000 

Railway Protection Force 70,000 

Special Frontier Force 3,000 

Total paramilitary forces personnel 762,735 



Source: Based on information from The Military Balance, 1994-1995, London, 1994, 
153-56; and SP's Military Yearbook, 1993-94, ed.J. Baranwal, New Delhi, 1993, 
291,305, 319,358, and 363. 



661 



India: A Country Study 



Table 35. Major Army Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Armored vehicles 
Tanks 

Arjun MBT-90 main battle India 

Vijayanta main battle -do- 

T— 55 main battle -do- 

T-72/M1 main battle -do- 

PT-76 light amphibious -do- 
Reconnaissance and personnel 

BRDM-2 reconnaissance vehicles -do- 
Ferret (IS) reconnaissance vehicles Britain 

BMP-1, BMP-2 armored infantry fighting 

vehicles (Sarath) India 

OT-62, OT-64 armored personnel 

carriers -do- 

BTR-50, BTR-60, BTR-152 armored 

personnel carriers -do- 

FV432 armored personnel carriers Britain 

Recovery 

Vijayanta India 

Artillery 
Towed 

75mm 75/24 mountain howitzers India 

76mm M-48 mountain guns "Yugoslavia 

85mm D-48 antitank guns Soviet Union 

25-pounder field guns Britain 

100mm M-1944 towed howitzers Soviet Union 

105mm (including M-56 pack) howitzers. . . India, Italy 

105mm IFG Mk I/Mk II howitzers India 

105mm light field guns -do- 

130mm M^16 towed howitzers Soviet Union 

5.5-inch medium howitzers Britain 

155mm FH-77B howitzers Sweden 

180mm S-23 howitzers Soviet Union 

Self-propelled 

25-pounder howitzers Britain 

105mm Abbott howitzers India 

155mm howitzers n.a. 

130mm M-46 Catapult howitzers India 

Multiple rocket launchers 

122mm BM-21 -do- 

122mm BM-24 -do- 



1,200 
800 

1,400 
100 

n.a. 2 
n.a. 

900 

157 

100 
n.a. 



900 
215 
n.a. 
n.a. 
185 
50 
1,200 
533 
550 
n.a. 
410 
n.a. 



80 



100 



so 



662 



Appendix 



Table 35. (Continued) Major Army Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Mortars 

81mm E-l 

120mm E-l 

120mm M-43 

120mm Brandt AM-50, E-l 

160mm M-l 60 

Antitank and guided weapons 

57mm M-18 recoilless rifles 

84mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifles 

106mm M-40A1 recoilless rifles 

MILAN 

Nag 

AT-3 Sagger 

AT-4 Spigot 

AT-5 Spandrel 

ENTAC 

Mines, antipersonnel 

M14 

M16A 

Mines, antitank 

MIA 

M3A 

Antiaircraft weapons 

20mm Oerlikon, towed 

23mm ZU 32/2 air defense guns 

23mm ZSU 23 air defense guns 

23mm ZSU 23/4 self-propelled air defense 
guns 

30mm 2S6 self-propelled air defense 

guns . . 

40mm L40/60 air defense guns 

40mm L40/70 automatic guns 

Surface-to-air missiles 

SA-2 Guideline 

SA-3 Goa 

SA-6 Gainful 

SA-7 Grail 

SA-8A and SA-8B Gecko 

SA-9Gaskin 

SA-11 Gadfly 

SA-13 Gopher 

SA-16 

Trishul 



India 
-do- 
Soviet Union 
Netherlands 
Soviet Union 

Brazil 
Sweden 
United States 
India 4 
-do- 
Soviet Union 
-do- 
-do- 
France 

India 
-do- 

-do- 
-do- 

Switzerland 
Soviet Union 
-do- 

-do- 

-do- 
Sweden 
-do- 
Soviet Union 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
India 



n.a. 
n.a. 
1,000 
500 
200 

n.a. 
n.a. 
1,000 
n.a. 
n.a. 5 
n.a. 
n.a. 
n.a. 
n.a. 

n.a. 
n.a. 

n.a. 
n.a. 

n.a. 
140 
n.a. 

75 



1,245 
1,000 

n.a. 

n.a. 

100 

620 
48 

200 
50 
45 

200 

n.a. 5 



663 



India: A Country Study 



Table 35. (Continued) Major Army Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 


Country of Origin 


N^umbcr in 
Inventory 


Agni 


-do- 


n.a. 5 


Akash 


-do- 


n.a. 5 


Surface-to-surface missiles 






Prithvi 


-do- 


15 


Helicopters 






Cheetah SA-315 


.... India 


40 


ChetakSA-319 


-do- 


50 


HAL advanced light helicopter 


-do- 


l 6 



1 Prototype; developed since 1974; completed trials in 1993; no production as of June 1994; production expected to 
start 1996. 

2 n.a. — not available. 

3 120 sought from foreign source, 1994; 480 to be produced under license in India. 

4 Under contract with France. 

5 Under development. 

6 Prototype, shared with Air Force. 

Source: Based on information from The Military Balance, 1994-1995, London, 1994, 
154; Jane's Infantry Weapons, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 389- 
90; Jane 1 s Armour and Artillery, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 61- 
63, 154, 351-52, 543, 614-15, 692, 773; and Jane 's Military Vehicles and Logistics, 
1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 34, 199-200. 



664 



Appendix 



Table 36. Major Naval Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Navy Ships 

Submarines 

Sindhugosh class 

(Soviet Kilo (Type 877EM) class) 

Kursura class 

(Soviet Foxtrot (Type 641) class) 

Shishumar class 

(German 209 class, Type HDW 1500) 

Carriers 

INS Viraat (Hermes class) 

with 12 Sea Harriers FRS Mk 51, 7 Sea 
Kings, Mk 42B/C, 1 Ka-27 helicopter 

INS Vikrant (Majestic class) 

with 6 Sea Harriers FRS Mk 51, 9 Sea 
Kings Mk 42, 1 Chetak SAR 

Destroyers 

Rajput class 

(Soviet Kashin II class) with Goa surface- 
to-air missiles, Styx surface-to-surface 
missiles, 533mm torpedo tubes, antisub- 
marine rocket launchers, and Ka-28 heli- 
copter 

Delhi class 

with SS-N-22 Sunburn and SA-N-7 mis- 
siles; 324mm torpedo tubes; 2 Sea King 
Mk42B or HAL advanced light helicopters 

Frigates 

Godavari class 

with Sea King helicopters, antisubmarine 
torpedo tubes, and Styx surface-to- surface 
missiles 

Nilgiri class 

(British Leander class) with antisubma- 
rine torpedo tubes, Limbo antisubmarine 
warfare mortars, Chetak and Sea King 
helicopters, antisubmarine warfare rocket 
launchers, and 114mm guns 

Kamorta class 

(Soviet Petya II class) with antisubmarine 
rocket launchers, 533mm torpedo tubes, 
and minelaying capabilities 

Corvettes 

Khukri class 

(antisubmarine warfare) with Styx surface- 
to-surface missiles and helicopter deck 

Durg class 

(Soviet Nanuchka II class) with Styx sur- 
face-to-surface missiles 



Soviet Union 
-do- 
Germany, India 

Britain 
-do- 
Soviet Union 

India 



-do- 



-do- 



Soviet Union 



India 



Soviet Union 



665 



India: A Country Study 



Table 36. (Continued) Major Naval Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Veer class Soviet Union, India 

(Soviet Tarantul I class) with Styx surface- 
to-surface missiles 

Abhay class -do- 

(Soviet Pauk II class) with antisubmarine 
torpedo tubes and andsubmarine mortars 

Patrol forces ships 

Vidyut class Soviet Union 

(Soviet Osa II class) with Styx surface-to- 
surface missiles 

Sukanya patrol ship, offshore South Korea, India 

with 1 Oerlikon 20mm gun, 1 Chetak heli- 
copter 

SDB Mk 2 patrol ship, inshore India 

SDB Mk 3 patrol ship, inshore -do- 
Mine warfare and countermeasure ships 

Pondicherry minesweeper, ocean Soviet Union 

(Soviet Natya I class) with minelaying 
capabilities 

Mahe minesweeper, inshore -do- 

(Soviet Yevgenya class) 

Bulsar minesweeper, inshore Britain, India 

(Bridsh Ham class) 

Amphibious ships 

Magar class India 

landing ship, tank, 200 troops, 12 tanks, 1 
helicopter 

Vasco da Gama class (Mk 3) -do- 
landing ship, utility, 287 troops 

Ghorpad class Soviet Union 

landing ship, medium (Soviet Polnocny C 
and D), 140 troops, 6 tanks 

Naval Air Force 

Attack aircraft 

Sea Harrier FRS Mk 5 1 Britain 

HAL Jaguar (Shamsher) India 

Andsubmarine helicopters 

Chetak -do- 

HAL advanced light helicopter -do- 

Ka-25 Hormone Soviet Union 

Ka-28 Helix -do- 
Sea King Mk 4 Britain 

Sea King Mk 4A/4B -do- 
Marine reconnaissance and andsubmarine war- 
fare aircraft 

PBN-2B Defender (utility) -do- 

11-38 May Soviet Union 

Tu-142M Bear F -do- 



12 



666 



Appendix 



Table 36. (Continued) Major Naval Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 


Country of Origin 


Number in 
Inventory 


HAL Dornier-228-201 


India 10 


10 11 


Communications aircraft 






BN-2 Islander 


Britain 


5 


HAL Dornier-228 


India 


2 


Chetak helicopters 


-do- 


3 


Search and rescue helicopters 






Sea King Mk 42C 


Britain 


6 


Training aircraft 






Sea Harrier T-Mk 60 (training) 


-do- 


3 


Kiran HJT-16 


India 


6 


Deepak HPT-32 


-do- 


A 


Training helicopters 






Chetak 


-do- 


2 


MD Hughes 300 


United States 


4 


Missiles 






Air-to-air 






R-550 Magic I and II 


France 


45 


Antisubmarine 






Sea Eagle 




n.a. 12 


Sea Skua 


-do- 


n.a. 



Two built in Germany, two built in India; one other under construction; one more planned in India. 

2 Two launched but not yet commissioned; one other under construction. 

3 Two more under construction; one more planned. 

4 One more under construction; two more planned. 

5 Five built in Soviet Union, four built in India; two more planned. 

6 Three built in South Korea, five built in India; one more planned. 

7 Two built in Britain, two built in India. 

8 One more under construction. 

9 Prototype. 

10 Under license with Germany. 

11 Seventeen more planned or in production. 

12 n.a. — not available. 

Source: Based on information from The Military Balance, 1994-1995, London, 1994, 
154-55; Jane's Fighting Ships, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 279- 
93; and Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 
1994, 119, 121-23. 



667 



India: A Country Study 



Table 3 7. Major Air Force Equipment, 1 994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Fighters, ground-attack 

MiG— 21MF/PFMA 

MiG-23 BN/UM 

Shamsher (Jaguar) 

Babhadur (MiG-27) 

Fighters 

HAL light combat aircraft 

MiG-21 FL/U 

MiG-21 bis/U 

MiG-23 MF/UM 

MiG-29 UB 

Mirage 2000H/TH 

Electric countermeasures 

Canberra B (I) 58 

Airborne surveillance warning and control system 
(ASWACS) 

HS-758 

Maritime attack 

Jaguar with Sea Eagle 

Helicopters, attack 

Mi-25 

Mi-35 

HAL advanced light helicopter 

Reconnaissance aircraft 

Canberra PR-57 

Camberra PR-67 

Andover HS-728 

MiG-23R 

MiG-23U 

Maritime reconnaissance /survey aircraft 

Gulfstream IV SRA 

Learjet 29 

Transport aircraft 

An-32 Sutlej 

11-76 Gajraj 

BAe-748 

Dornier-228 

Transport helicopters 

Mi-8 

Mi-17 

Mi-26 



Soviet Union 

-do- 
Britain, India 
India 2 

-do- 
Soviet Union 
-do- 
-do- 
-do- 
France 

Britain 



India 4 

Britain 

Soviet Union 
-do- 
India 

Britain 
-do- 
-do- 
Soviet Union 

-do- 
United States 

-do- 
Soviet Union 
-do- 
Britain 
Germany 

Soviet Union 
-do- 
-do- 



144 
54 
89 1 

120 

n.a 3 
74 

170 
26 
59 
35 



18 
18 

l 5 

6 
2 
4 
6 
2 

2 
2 

105 
24 
33 
30 



668 



Appendix 



Table 37. (Continued) Major Air Force Equipment, 1994 

Type and Description Country of Origin inventory 1 



VIP aircraft 

Boeing 707-337C United States 2 

Boeing 737 -do- 3 

BAe-748 Britain 7 

Liaison aircraft 

BAe-748 -do- 16 

Training aircraft 

BAe-748 -do- 28 

Hunter F-56 -do- 20 

Hunter T-66 -do- 18 

Canberra T-54 -do- 2 

Canberra TT-18 -do- 5 

Jaguar IB France, Britain 15 

Kiran I India 120 

Kiran II -do- 56 

Deepak HPT-32 -do- 88 

HT-2 -do- 60 

HTT-35 -do- n.a. 6 

MiG-29 UB Soviet Union 5 

IskaraTS-11 ac Poland 44 

Training helicopters 

Chetak India 20 

Mi-24 Soviet Union 2 

Mi-35 -do- 2 

Missiles 

Air-to-surface 

Akash India n.a. 

AM-39 Exocet France n.a. 

AS-7 Kerry Soviet Union n.a. 

AS-10 Karen -do- n.a. 

AS-11B France n.a. 

AS-30 -do- n.a. 

FAB-500 Soviet Union n.a. 

FAB-750 -do- n.a. 

FAB-1000 -do- n.a. 

Sea Eagle Britain n.a. 

Air-to-air 

AA-2 Atoll Soviet Union n.a. 

AA-7 Apex -do- n.a. 

AA-8 Aphid -do- n.a. 

AA-10 Alamo -do- n.a. 

AA-11 Archer -do- n.a. 



669 



India: A Country Study 



Table 37. (Continued) Major Air Force Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 


Country of Origin 


Number in 
Inventory 


R-550 Magic 


France 


n.a. 


Super 530D 


-do- 


n.a. 


Surface-to-air 






Divina V75SM/VK (SA-2, SA-3, and 






SA-5) 


Soviet Union 


280 



Some assembled in India; additional inventory to be manufactured in India under license with Britain. 

2 Under license with Soviet Union and Russia. 

3 n.a. — not available. 

4 Prototype; first flights expected in 1995 and 1996; initial operational capability in 2002; up to 200 units. 

5 With India, French, and German equipment. 

6 Prototype, shared with army. 

Source: Based on information from The Military Balance, 1994-1995, London, 1994, 
155; Jane's AU the World's Aircraft, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 
117, 119-21, 123; and Jane's Radar and Electronic Warfare Systems, 1994-95, 
Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 242. 



Table 38. Major Coast Guard Equipment, 1994 



Type and Description 



Country of Origin 



Number in 
Inventory 



Patrol forces 
Offshore 

Samar India 3 

Vikram (Type P-957) -do- 9 

Inshore 

Jija Bai (Type 956) -do- 7 

Raj (SDB Mk 2) -do- 5 

32-ton patrol craft South Korea 8 

Jija Bai (Mod 1) Singapore, India 11 

49-ton patrol craft India 7 

Aircraft 

HAL Dornier-228 maritime surveillance Germany, India ll 1 

Chetak helicopter India 9 

F-27 maritime Netherlands 2 

1 Three built in Germany, eight built in India; twenty-two more on order. 

Source: Based on information from Kailish Kohli, "Aviation in Indian Coast Guard," 
Sainik Samachar [New Delhi], 41, No. 5, January 30, 1994, 11; Jane' s Fighting 
Ships, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 294-95; and Jane's All the 
World's Aircraft, 1994-95, Coulsdon, United Kingdom, 1994, 123. 



670 



Bibliography 



Chapter 1 

Adas, Michael. Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technol- 
ogy, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell Uni- 
versity Press, 1989. 

Adas, Michael. "Twentieth Century Approaches to the Indian 
Mutiny of 1857-58," Journal of Asian History [Wiesbaden], 5, 
No. 1, 1971, 1-19. 

Ahmad, Imtiaz. State and Foreign Policy: India's Role in South Asia. 
New Delhi: Vikas, 1993. 

Ali, M. Athar. "The Mughal Policy — A Critique of Revisionist 
Approaches," Modern Asian Studies [London], 27, Pt. 4, Octo- 
ber 1993, 699-710. 

Ali, Tariq. An Indian Dynasty: The Story of the Nehru-Gandhi Fam- 
ily. New York: Putnam, 1985. 

Altekar, A.S. Rastrakutas and Their Times. 2d ed., rev. Pune: Ori- 
ental Book Agency, 1967. 

Asher, Catherine Ella Blanshard. The New Cambridge History of 
India, 1.4: Architecture in Mughal India. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1992. 

Ashton, S.R. British Policy Towards the Indian States, 1905-1939. 
London Studies on South Asia, No. 2. London: Curzon, 
1982. 

Austin, Granville. The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation. 

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. 
Baird, Robert. Religion in Modern India. New Delhi: Manohar, 

1981. 

Baker, Christopher J. An Indian Rural Economy: The Tamiland 

Countryside. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. 
Baker, Christopher J. The Politics of South India, 1920-1937. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. 
Baker, David. "Colonial Beginnings and the Indian Response: 

The Revolt of 1857-58 in Madhya Pradesh," Modern Asian 

Studies [London], 25, Pt. 3, July 1991, 511-43. 
Bakshi, S.R. Morarji Desai. New Delhi: Amol, 1991. 



671 



India: A Country Study 



Banerjee, Hiranmay. The House of the Tagores. 3d ed. Calcutta: 
Rabiondra Bharati University, 1968. 

Barker, A J. Bastard War: The Mesopotamian Campaign of 1914- 
1918. New York: Dial, 1967. 

Barraclough, Geoffrey, and Geoffrey Parker, eds. The Times 
Atlas of World History. 4th ed. Maplewood, New Jersey: Ham- 
mond, 1993. 

Barrier, N. Gerald. India and America: American Publishing on 
India, 1930-1985. New Delhi: American Institute of Indian 
Studies, 1986. 

Basham, A.L. The Origin and Development of Classical Hinduism. 
Ed. and completed by Kenneth G. Zysk. New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1989. 

Basham, A.L. The Wonder That Was India, 1: A Survey of the His- 
tory and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of 
the Muslims. 3d ed., rev. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967. 

Basham, A.L., ed. A Cultural History of India. Oxford: Clarendon 
Press, 1975. 

Bayly, C.A. The New Cambridge History of India, III: Indian Society 
and the Making of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1987. 

Bayly, C.A. Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars: North Indian Society in 
the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1983. 

Beach, Milo Cleveland. The New Cambridge History of India, 1.3: 
Mughal and Rajput Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1992. 

Beaumont, Roger. Sword of the Raj: The British Army in India, 
1747-1947. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977. 

Begley, Vimala, and Richard Daniel DePuma, eds. Rome and 
India: The Ancient Sea Trade. Madison: University of Wiscon- 
sin Press, 1992. 

Bhattacharjee, Arun. Rajiv Gandhi: Life and Message. New Delhi: 
Ashish, 1992. 

Blake, Stephen P. Shahjahanabad: The Sovereign City in Mughal 
India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 

Bondurant, Joan V. The Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philos- 
ophy of Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. 



672 



Bibliography 



Bose, Subhas Chandra. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: Correspon- 
dence and Selected Documents, 1930-1942. Ed., Ravindra 
Kumar. New Delhi: Inter-India, 1992. 

Bose, Sugata. The New Cambridge History of India, III. 2: Peasant 
Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal since 1770. Cam- 
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Brass, Paul R. The New Cambridge History of India, IV. 1: The Poli- 
tics of India since Independence. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1994. 

Brecher, Michael. Nehru: A Political Biography. London: Oxford 
University Press, 1959. 

Brecher, Michael. The Politics of Succession in India. Westport, 
Connecticut: Greenwood, 1976. 

Brown, Judith M. Gandhi and Civil Disobedience. London: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1977. 

Brown, Judith M. Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democ- 
racy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. 

Buchanan, R.A. "The Diaspora of British Engineering," Technol- 
ogy and Culture, 27, No. 3. July 1986, 501-24. 

Carras, Mary C. Indira Gandhi in the Crucible of Leadership. Bos- 
ton: Beacon Press, 1979. 

Carson, Penelope. "An Imperial Dilemma: The Propagation of 
Christianity in Early Colonial India," Journal of Imperial and 
Commonwealth History [London], 18, No. 2, 1990, 169-90. 

Chanchreek, K.L., and Saroj Prasad, eds. Crisis in India. Delhi: 
H.K. Publishers, 1993. 

Chandra, Bipan. Essays on Contemporary India. New Delhi: Har- 
Anand, 1993. 

Chandra, Bipan. Modern India. New Delhi: National Council of 
Educational Research and Training, 1971. 

Chandra, Satish. Medieval India: A Textbook for Classes XI-XII. 2 
vols. New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research 
and Training, 1978. 

Chattopadhyaya, B.D. "Origins of the Rajputs: The Political, 
Economic, and Social Progress in Early Medieval Rajas than," 
Indian Historical Review [Delhi], 3, No. 1, March 1976, 59-82. 

Chaudhury, K.N. The Trading World of Asia and the English East 
India Company, 1660-1760. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- 
sity Press, 1978. 



673 



India: A Country Study 

Chellaney. Brahma. Nuclear Proliferation: The U.S. -Indian Con- 
flict. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993. 

Chopra. Pran, ed. Contemporary Pakistan: Xrw Anns and Images. 
New Delhi: Vikas, 1983. 

Collins. Larry, and Dominique Lapierre. Freedom at Midnight. 
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. 

Crawford, S. Cromwell. Ram Mohan Row New York: Paragon, 
1987. 

Cunningham, Joseph Davey. History of the Sikhs, From the Origins 
of the Xation to the Battles of the Sutlej. Delhi: Sultan Chand, 
1955. 

Damodaran. A.K., and Bajpai, U.S., eds. Indian Foreign Policy: 
Hie Indira Gandhi Years. Xew Delhi: Radiant, 1990. 

Das, Arvind. India Invented. Xew Delhi: Manohar, 1992. 

Das, Kamal Kishore. Economic History of Moghul India: An Anno- 
tated Bibliography, 1526-1875. Calcutta: Santiniketan, 1991. 

Das, M.N. India under Morley and Minto: Politics Behind Revolu- 
tion, Repression, and Reforms. London: Allen and Unwin, 1964. 

Das. Yeena. Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots, and Survivors 
in South Asia. Xew Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Dasgupta, A. "Indian Merchants and the Trade in the Indian 
Ocean." Pages 407-33 in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan 
Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, 1: 
c. 1200— c. 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1982. 

Datta, V.N. Sati: Widow Burning in India. Xew Delhi: Manohar, 
1990. 

Davies, C. Collin. An Historical Atlas of the Indian Peninsula. Lon- 
don: Oxford University Press, 1959. 

Derrett.J. Duncan. Religion, Law, and the State in India. London: 
Faber, 1968. 

Desai, Morarji. The Story of My Life. 3 vols. Xew Delhi: Perga- 
mon, 1979. 

Dhanagare, D.X\ Peasant Movements in India, 1920-1950. Xew 
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Digbv, Simon. "The Maritime Trade of India." Pages 125-62 in 
Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge 
Economic History of India, 1: C.1200-C.1750. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1982. 



674 



Bibliography 



Dikshit, D.R Political History of the Chalukyas of Badami. New 
Delhi: Abhinav, 1980. 

Dixit, Prabla. Communalism: A Struggle for Power. New Delhi: Ori- 
ent Longman, 1981. 

Doniger, Wendy, trans. Laws ofManu. New York: Penguin, 1992. 

Doshi, Saryu, ed. India and Greece. New Delhi: Marg, 1985. 

Dunn, Rose E. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta. London: Croom 
Helm, 1986. 

Dutt, Ashok K., and Allen G. Noble. "The Culture of India in a 

Spatial Perspective: An Introduction." Pages 1-28 in Allen G. 

Noble and Ashok K. Dutt, eds., India: Cultural Patterns and 

Processes. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 
Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204- 

1760. Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies, No. 17. 

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 
Eaton, Richard M. Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700: Social Roles of 

Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 

1978. 

Eldridge, P.J. The Politics of Foreign Aid in India. New York: 

Schocken, 1970. 
Ellinwood, DeWitt C, and S.P. Pradhan. India and World War I. 

New Delhi: Manohar, 1978. 
Embree, Ainslie T. 1857 in India: Mutiny or War of Independence. 

Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1963. 
Embree, Ainslie T., ed. Alberuni's India. New York: Norton, 

1971. 

Embree, Ainslie T., ed. Encyclopedia of Asian History. 4 vols. The 
Asia Society. New York: Scribner's, 1988. 

Embree, Ainslie T, ed. Sources of Indian Tradition, 1: From the 
Beginning to 1800. 2d ed. Introduction to Oriental Civiliza- 
tion Series. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 

Erickson, Erik H. Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Non- 
violence. New York: Norton, 1970. 

Fairser vis, Walter A. The Roots of Ancient India: The Archaeology of 
Early Indian Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1971. 

Farmer, Edward L., Gavin R.G. Hambly, David Kopf, Byron K. 
Marshall, and Romeyn Taylor. Comparative History of Civiliza- 
tions in Asia. 2 vols. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 
1977. 



675 



India: A Country Study 



Featherstone, Donald F. Victorian Colonial Warfare, India: From 
the Conquest of Sind to the Indian Mutiny. London: Cassell, 
1992. 

Fischer, Louis. The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. New York: Harper, 
1950. 

Fisher, Michael. A Clash of Cultures: Awadh, the British, and the 

Mughals. New Delhi: Manohar, 1987. 
Fisher, Michael. Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency 

System, 1764-1857. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 

1991. 

Frykenberg, Robert E. Guntur District 1788-1848: A History of 
Local Influence and Central Authority in South India. Oxford: 
Oxford University Press, 1965. 

Frykenberg, Robert E. "The Impact of Conversion and Social 
Reform upon Society in South India During the Late Com- 
pany Period: Questions Concerning Hindu-Christian 
Encounters, with Special Reference to Tinnevelly." Pages 
187-243 in C.H. Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, eds., 
Indian Society and the Beginnings of Modernization, c. 1830- 
1850. London: School of Oriental and Arican Studies, 1976. 

Gandhi, Mahatma. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments 
with Truth. Trans., Mahadev Desai. Boston: Beacon Press, 
1957. Reprint. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. 

Gandhi, Mahatma. Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Ed., 
Raghavan Iyer. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991. 

Gandhi, Mahatma. The Gandhi Reader: A Sourcebook of His Life 
and Writings. Ed., Homer A.Jack. Grove Press Eastern Philos- 
ophy and Literature Studies. New York: Grove Press, 1961. 

Gandhi, Mahatma. Non-Violent Resistance. Comp. and ed., 
Bharatan Kumanappa. New York: Schocken, 1951. 

Ganguly, D.K. Ancient India: History and Archaeology. New Delhi: 
Abhinav, 1994. 

Gascoigne, Bamber. The Great Moghuls. London: Cape, 1971. 

Ghose, S.K. Politics of Violence: Dawn of a Dangerous Era. Spring- 
field, Virginia: Nataraj, 1992. 

Glazer, Sulochana Raghavan, and Nathan Glazer, eds. Conflict- 
ing Images: India and the United States. Glenn Dale, Maryland: 
Riverdale, 1990. 

Goalen, Paul. India: From Mughal Empire to British Raj. Cam- 
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 



676 



Bibliography 



Gokkhale, B.C. "Buddhism in the Gupta Age." Pages 129-56 in 

Bardwell L. Smith, ed., Essays on Gupta Culture. New Delhi: 

Motilal Banarsidass, 1983. 
Gopal, Sarvepalli. Jawaharlal Nehru: An Anthology. New Delhi: 

Oxford University Press, 1980. 
Gopal, Sarvepalli. Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography. 3 vols. London: 

Cape, 1975-84. 

Gopal, Sarvepalli. Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography. Abridged ed. 

New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. 
Gopal, Sarvepalli, ed. Anatomy of a Confrontation: The Babri 

Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi Issue. New Delhi: Viking, 1991. 
Goradia, Nayana. Lord Curzon: The Last of the British Moghuls. 

New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. 
Gordon, Stewart. The New Cambridge History of India, II. 4: The 

Marathas, 1600-1818. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press, 1993. 

Gorman, Mel. "Sir William O'Shaughnessy, Lord Dalhousie, 
and the Establishment of the Telegraph System in India," 
Technology and Culture, 12, No. 4, October 1971, 581-601. 

Goyal, Shankar. Aspects of Ancient Indian History and Historiogra- 
phy. New Delhi: Harnam, 1993. 

Guha, Ranajit, and Gayatri Chakravorty, eds. Subaltern Studies: 
Writings on South Asian History and Society. 5 vols. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1982-87. 

Gupte, Pranay. Mother India: A Political Biography of Indira Gan- 
dhi. New York: Scribner's, 1992. 

Gupte, Pranay. Vengeance: India after the Assassination of Indira 
Gandhi New York: Norton, 1985. 

Habib, Irfan. The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707. 
New York: Asia, 1963. 

Habib, Irfan. An Atlas of the Mughal Empire. Delhi: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1982. 

Habib, Irfan. "Mughal India." Pages 214-25 in Tapan Ray- 
chaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic His- 
tory of India, 2: c. 1200-C.1750. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1982. 

Habib, Irfan, ed. Medieval India, 1: Researchers in the History of 
India, 1200-1750. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Hadi Hussain, Muhammed. Syed Ahmed Khan: Pioneer of Muslim 
Resurgence. Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1970. 



677 



India: A Country Study 



Halbfass, Wilhelm. India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding. 

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988. 
Hamilton, J. R. Alexander the Great. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 

1965. 

Hardgrave, Robert L., Jr., and Stanley A. Kochanek. India: Gov- 
ernment and Politics in a Developing Nation. 5th ed. Fort Worth, 
Texas: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993. 

Harrison, Mark. "Tropical Medicine in Nineteenth-Century 
India," British Journal for the History of Science [Cambridge], 
25, Pt. 3, No. 86, September 1992, 299-318. 

Hart, Henry C, ed. Indira Gandhi's India: A Political System Reap- 
praised. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976. 

Haynes, Douglas E. Rhetoric and Ritual in Colonial India: The 
Shaping of a Public Culture in Surat City, 1852-1928. Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1991. 

Heinsath, Charles. Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform. 
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964. 

Hill, John L., ed. The Congress and Indian Nationalism: Historical 
Perspectives. Westwood, Massachusetts: Riverdale, 1991. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1992. 60th ed. Ed., S. 
Sarkar. Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1992. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarkar. 
Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 

Hiro, Dilip. Inside India Today. London: Routledge and Kegan 
Paul, 1976. 

Hirschman, Edwin. White Mutiny: The Ilbert Bill Crisis in India 
and the Genesis of the Indian National Congress. New Delhi: Her- 
itage, 1980. 

Hossain, Hameeda. The Company Weavers of Bengal: The East 
India Company and the Organization of Textile Production in Ben- 
gal, 1750-1813. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. 

Humbers, Philippe. The Rajiv Gandhi Years: Sunshine and Shad- 
ows. New Delhi: Vimot, 1992. 

Hutchins, Francis. The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism 
in India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. 

Hutchins, Francis. Spontaneous Revolution: The Quit India Move- 
ment. New Delhi: Manohar, 1971. 

Ilankovatikal. The Cilappatikaram of llano Atikal: An Epic of South 
India. Trans., R. Parthasarathy. Translations from the Asian 
Classics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. 



678 



Bibliography 



Inden, Ronald. Imagining India. Oxford: Oxford University 
Press, 1990. 

Inder Singh, Anita. "Decolonization in India: The Statement of 
February 20, 1947," International History Review [Toronto], 6, 
No. 2, May 1984, 191-209. 

Inder Singh, Anita. "Imperial Defence and the Transfer of 
Power in India, 1946-1947," International History Review 
[Toronto], 4, No. 4, November 1982, 568-88. 

India Handbook, 1996. 5th ed. Ed., Robert W. Bradnock. Bath, 
United Kingdom: Trade and Travel, 1995. 

Irschich, Eugene F. Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The 
Non-Brahman Movement and Tamil Separatism. Berkeley: Uni- 
versity of California Press, 1969. 

Irschich, Eugene F. Tamil Revivalism in the 1930s. New Delhi: 
Manohar, 1986. 

Jain, C.K., ed. Rajiv Gandhi and Parliament. New Delhi: CBS, 
1992. 

Jain, M.P. Outlines of Indian Legal History. 2d ed. Bombay: Tri- 
pathi, 1966. 

Jalal, Ayesha. The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and 
the Demand for Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1985. 

Jayakar, Pupul. Indira Gandhi: A Biography. New Delhi: Penguin, 
1992. 

Jeffery, Roger. "Recognizing India's Doctors: The Institutional- 
ization of Medical Dependency, 1918-39," Modern Asian 
Studies [London], 13, Pt. 2, April 1979, 302-26. 

Jeffrey, Robin, ed. People, Princes, and Paramount Power: Society 
and Politics in Indian Princely States. New Delhi: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1978. 

Jones, Kenneth W. AryaDharm: Hindu Consciousness in 19th Cen- 
tury Punjab. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 

Jones, Kenneth W. The New Cambridge History of India, III.l: 
Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Kandaswamy, S.N. Buddhism as Expounded in Manimekalai (The 
Jewelled Belt). Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 1978. 

Kapur, Rajiv. Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith. New Delhi: 
Vikas, 1987. 



679 



In dia: A Co u n try St u dy 

Karashima, Xoboru. Towards a New Formation: South Indian Soci- 
ety under Yijayanagar Rule. New Delhi: Oxford University 
Press, 1992. 

Kashvap, Subhash. The Politics of Defection. Delhi: National, 
1969. 

Keay. John. Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of 
Gov er nubility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 

Keay John. The Honourable Company: A History of the English East 
India Company. London: Harper Collins, 1991. 

Kopf, David. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern 
Indian Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. 

Kopf, David. Bntish Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The 
Dynamics of Indian Modernization. 1773-1835. Berkeley: Uni- 
versity of California Press, 1969. 

Kosambi, D.D. Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian 
Culture. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1962. 

Kothari, Rajni. Politics in India. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. 

Kreisberg, Paul H. "Gandhi at Midterm," Foreign Affairs, 65, No. 
5, Summer 1987, 1055-76. 

Krishna Murari. The Calukyas of Kalyani. from circa 973 A.D. to 
1200 AD. Delhi: Concept, 1977. 

Kulke, Hermann, ed. The State in India, 1000-1700. Oxford in 
India Readings, Themes in Indian History. Delhi: Oxford 
University Press, 1995. 

Kulke, Hermann, and Dietmar Rothermund. A History of India. 
Rev, updated ed. London: Routledge, 1990. 

Kumar, Deepak, ed. Science and Empire: Essays in Indian Context. 
1700-1947. Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1991. 

Kumar, Dharma, and Meghnad Desai, eds. The Cambridge Eco- 
nomic History of India, 2: c. 1757-c. 1970. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1983. 

Kumar, Ravinder. The Social History of Modern India. New Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Lelweld, David. Aligarh's First Generation. Princeton: Princeton 
University Press, 1977. 

Lewis, Martin D. The British in India: Imperialism or Trusteeship. 
Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath, 1962. 

Lingat, R. The Classical Law of India. Trans., J.D.M. Derrett. 
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. 



680 



Bibliography 



Ludden, David. Peasant History in South India. Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1985. 
McLane, John R. Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. 
MacLeod, Roy M. "Scientific Advice for British India: Imperial 

Perceptions and Administrative Goals, 1898-1923," Modern 

Asian Studies [London], 9, Pt. 3, July 1975, 343-84. 
Mahajan, Jagmohan. The Raj Landscape: British Views of Indian 

Cities. New Delhi: Spantech, 1988. 
Mahalingam, T.V. Administration and Social Life under Vijayana- 

gar. 2 vols. Madras: University of Madras, 1969-75. 
Mahalingam, T.V. Readings in South Indian History. Delhi: B.R. 

Publishing, 1977. 
Mahalingam, T.V. South Indian Polity. 2d ed., rev. Madras: Uni- 
versity of Madras, 1967. 
Malik, Hafeez. Sir Sayyid Ahamd Khan and Muslim Modernization 

in India and Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press, 

1980. 

Mansingh, Surjit. Historical Dictionary of India. Asian Historical 
Dictionaries, No. 20. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow, 1996. 

Marshall, John Hubert. Taxila: An Illustrated Account of the 
Archaeological Excavations Carried Out at Taxila under the Orders 
of the Government of India Between the Years, 1913 and 1934. 3 
vols. Varanasi: Bhartiya, 1975. 

Marshall, P.J. The New Cambridge History of India, II. 2: Bengal: The 
British Bridgehead: Eastern India, 1740-1828. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1987. 

Marshall, P.J. Problems of Empire: Britain and India, 1757-1813. 
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968. 

Masani, Zaheer. Indira Gandhi: A Biography. Farmington, New 
York: Brown, 1976. 

Mayer, Adrian C. "Rulership and Divinity: The Case of the Mod- 
ern Hindu Princes and Beyond," Modern Asian Studies [Lon- 
don], 25, Pt. 4, October 1991, 765-90. 

Mehra, Parshotam. A Dictionary of Modern Indian History, 1707- 
1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. 

Mehta, Ved. Portrait of India. New Haven: Yale University Press, 
1993. 

Menezes, S.L. Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Sev- 
enteenth to the Twenty-first Century. New Delhi: Penguin, 1993. 



681 



India: A Country Study 



Menon, Vapal Pangunni. The Story of the Integration of the Indian 
States. Madras: Orient Longman, 1956. Reprint. Madras: Ori- 
ent Longman, 1985. 

Menon, Vapal Pangunni. The Transfer of Power in India. Prince- 
ton: Princeton University Press, 1957. 

Metcalf, Thomas R. The Aftermath of the Revolt: India, 1857-1870. 
Princeton: Princeton University, 1964. 

Metcalf, Thomas R. An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and 
Britain's Raj. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 

Metcalf, Thomas R. Modern India: An Interpretive Anthology. Lon- 
don: Macmillan, 1971. 

Metcalf, Thomas R. The New Cambridge History of India, TV. 3: Ide- 
ologies of the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1994. 

Michell, George. The New Cambridge History of India, VI. 1: Archi- 
tecture and Art of Southern India: Vijayanagara and the Successor 
States, 1350-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1995. 

Miller, Barbara Stolen "Presidential Address: Contending Nar- 
ratives — The Political Life of the Indian Epics," Journal of 
Asian Studies, 50, No. 4, November 1991, 783-92. 

Minakshi, C. Administration and Social Life under the Pallavas. 
Madras: University of Madras, 1977. 

Minault, Gail. The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and 
Political Mobilization in India. Studies in Oriental Culture, No. 
16. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. 

Mishra, Jayashri. Social and Economic Conditions under the Imperial 
Rashtrakutas. New Delhi: Commonwealth, 1992. 

Misra, Satya Swarup. The Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach. 
New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992. 

Moon, Penderel. The British Conquest and Dominion of India. 
London: Duckworth, 1989. 

Moon, Penderel. Divide and Quit. London: Chatto and Windus, 
1961. 

Moore, R.J. Crisis of Indian Unity, 1917-1940. London: Oxford 

University Press, 1974. 
Moraes, Dom. Indira Gandhi. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980. 
Moreland, W.H. India at the Death of Akbar, 1: An Economic Study. 

N.p.: 1920. Reprint. Delhi: Atma Ram, 1962. 



682 



Bibliography 

Morrisjones, W.H. The Government and Politics of India. London: 

Hutchinson, 1971. 
Mukhia, Harbans. Perspectives on Medieval History. New Delhi: 

Vikas, 1993. 

Nanda, B.R. The Indo-Greeks. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. 

Nanda, B.R. "The Kushana State: A Preliminary Study." Pages 
251-74 in Henri J. Claessen and Peter Skalnik, eds., The 
Study of the State. The Hague: Mouton, 1981. 

Nanda, B.R. Mahatma Gandhi. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958. 

Nanda, B.R. "Religious Policy and Toleration in Ancient India." 
Pages 17-52 in Bardwell L. Smith, ed., Essays on Gupta Cul- 
ture. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983. 

Narain, Harsh. The Ayodhya Temple Mosque Dispute. New Delhi: 
Penman, 1993. 

Narashimhan, C.R. Rajagopalachar: A Biography. New Delhi: 
Radiant, 1993. 

Nayar, Kuldip, and Kushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab: Operation 

Bluestar and After. New Delhi: Vision Books, 1984. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches. 5 vols. New 

Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and 

Broadcasting, 1958-68. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. 2d Series. 

16 vols. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Memorial Fund, 1988-92. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Towards Freedom: An Autobiography. New 

York: Day, 1941. 

Nelson, David N. Bibliography of South Asia. Scarecrow Area Bib- 
liographies, No. 4. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1994. 

Nilakanta Sastri, Killidaikurchi Aiyah Aiyar. The Colas. 2d ed., 
rev. University of Madras Historical Series, No. 9. Madras: 
University of Madras, 1975. 

Nilakanta Sastri, Kallidaikurchi Aiyah Aiyar. History of South 
India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar. 4th ed. 
Madras: Oxford University Press, 1976. 

Noble, Allen G., and Ashok K. Dutt, eds. India: Cultural Patterns 
and Processes. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. 

Nugent, Nicholas. Rajiv Gandhi: Son of a Dynasty. New Delhi: 
UBS, 1991. 

Page, David. Prelude to Partition: The Indian Muslims and the Impe- 
rial System of Control, 1920-1932. Delhi: Oxford University 
Press, 1982. 



683 



India: A Country Study 



Pandey, B.N. The Break Up of British India. London: Macmillan, 
1969. 

Panikkar, K.M. Asia and Western Dominance. 2d ed. New York: 
Collier, 1969. 

Park, Richard L., and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita. India's Politi- 
cal System. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1979. 

Patnaik, Naveen. A Second Paradise: Indian Courtly Life, 1590- 
1947. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday, 1985. 

Patterson, Maureen L.P., in collaboration with William J. 
Alspaugh. South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographic Synthesis. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 

Paul, John J. The Legal Profession in Colonial South India. Bombay: 
Oxford University Press, 1991. 

Paul, JohnJ. "Religion and Medicine in South India: The Scud- 
der Medical Missionaries and the Christian Medical College 
and Hospital, Vellore," Fides et Historia, 22, No. 3, Fall 1990, 
16-29. 

Pearson, M.N. Before Colonialism: Theories of Asian-European Rela- 
tions, 1500-1750. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. 

Pearson, M.N. The New Cambridge History of India, LI: The Portu- 
guese in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 

Piggott, Stuart. Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. London: Penguin, 
1952. 

Possehl, Gregory L., ed. The Harappan Civilization. London: 

Aris and Phillips, 1982. 
Possehl, Gregory L., ed. South Asian Archaeology Studies. New 

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. 
Powell, Avril Ann. Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India. 

London: Curzon, 1993. 
Prasad, Rajeshwar. Days with Lai Bahadur Shastri. New Delhi: 

Allied, 1991. 

Qureshi, I.H. The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcon- 
tinent, 1610-1947. The Hague: Mouton, 1962. 

Ramusack, Barbara N. The Princes of India in the Twilight of 
Empire: Dissolution of a Patron-Client System, 1914-1939. 
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978. 

Rangarajan, L.N., trans, and ed. Kautilya: The Arthasastra. New 
York: Penguin, 1992. 



684 



Bibliography 



Raychaudhuri, Tapan, and Irfan Habib, eds. The Cambridge Eco- 
nomic History of India, 1: C.1200-C.1750. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1982. 

Richards, J.R "The Islamic Frontier in the East: Expansion into 
South Asia," South Asia [Nedlands, Australia], No. 4, October 
1974, 91-109. 

Richards, John F. The New Cambridge History of India, II. 5: The 
Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1993. 

Rizvi, S.A.A. The Wonder That Was India, 2: A Survey of the History 
and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent from the Coming of the 
Muslims to the British Conquest, 1200-1700. London: Sidgwick 
and Jackson, 1987. 

Robb, Peter G. The Evolution of British Policy Towards Indian Poli- 
tics, 1880-1920. Westwood, Massachusetts: Riverdale, 1992. 

Robinson, Francis. Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics 
of the United Provinces' Muslims, 1860-1932. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1974. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Roy, Asim. "The Politics of India's Partition: The Revisionist 
Perspective," Modern Asian Studies [London], 24, Pt. 2, April 
1990, 385-415. 

Rudner, David W. Caste and Colonialism in Colonial India: The 
Nattukkottai Chettiars. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1994. 

Rustomji, Nari. Imperilled Frontiers: India's North-Eastern Border- 
lands. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Sahasrabuddhe, P.G., and Manik Chandra Vajpayee. The People 
Versus Emergency: A Saga of Struggle. Trans., Sudhakar Raje. 
New Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, 1991. 

Saksena, N.S. India: Towards Anarchy, 1967-1992. New Delhi: 
Abhinav, 1993. 

Sangwan, Satpal. "Science Education in India under Colonial 
Constraints, 1792-1857," Oxford Review of Education 
[Oxford], 16, No. 1, 1990, 81-95. 

Sangwan, Satpal. Science, Technology, and Colonisation: An Indian 
Experience, 1757-1857. New Delhi: Anmika Prakashan, 1991. 



685 



India: A Country Study 



Sankaia, H.D. Aspects of Indian History and Archeology. Delhi: B.R. 

Publishing, 1977. 
SarDesai, D.R., and Anand Mohan, eds. The Legacy of Nehru: A 

Centennial Assessment. New Delhi: Promilla, 1992. 
Sarkar, Jadhunath. Fall of the Mughal Empire. 4 vols. Bombay: 

Orient Longman, 1964-72. 
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885-1947. Delhi: Macmillan, 

1983. 

Schuhmacher, Stephan, and Gert Woerner, eds. The Encyclope- 
dia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala, 
1989. 

Schwartzberg, Joseph E., ed. A Historical Atlas of South Asia. 2d 
impression. Reference Series of Association for Asian Stud- 
ies, No. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Seal, Anil. The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and 
Collaboration in the Late Nineteenth Century. London: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1968. 

Sen Gupta, Bhabani. Communism in Indian Politics. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1972. 

Sen, S.P., ed. Dictionary of National Biography. 4 vols. Calcutta: 
Institute of Historical Studies, 1975. 

Sen, S.P., ed. Sources of the History of India. Calcutta: Institute of 
Historical Studies, 1978. 

Seshan, N.K. With Three Prime Ministers: Nehru, Indira, and Rajiv. 
New Delhi: Wiley-Eastern, 1993. 

Sewell, Robert. A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar. London: Sonn- 
enschein, 1900. 

Sharma, Kususm. Ambedkar and Indian Constitution. New Delhi: 
Ashish, 1992. 

Sharma, Ram Sharman. Ancient India. New Delhi: National 
Council of Educational Research and Training, 1977. 

Sharma, Ram Sharman. Aspects of Political Ideas and Institutions 
in Ancient India. 2d ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968. 

Sharma, Ram Sharman. Indian Feudalism: c. 300-1200. Cal- 
cutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1965. 

Sharma, Ram Sharman. Light on Early Indian Society and Econ- 
omy. Bombay: Manaktalas, 1966. 

Sharma, Ram Sharman, ed. Land Revenue in Ancient India: His- 
torical Studies. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971. 



686 



Bibliography 



Sharma, Ramesh Chandra, Atul Kumar Singh, Sugam Anand, 
Gyaneshwar Chaturvedi, and Jayati Chaturvedi. Historiogra- 
phy and Historians in India since Independence. Agra: M.G. Pub- 
lishers, 1991. 

Shourie, Arun. Indian Controversies: Essays on Religion in Politics. 

New Delhi: Manohar, 1993. 
Shourie, Arun. Symptoms of Fascism. New Delhi: Vikas, 1978. 
Singh, Birendra Kumar. Early Chalukyas of Vatapi, circa A.D. 500 

to 757. Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1991. 
Singh, Gopal. A History of the Sikh People, 1469-1978. New Delhi: 

World Sikh University Press, 1979. 
Singh, Harbans. The Heritage of the Sikhs. Columbia, Missouri: 

South Asia Books, 1983. 
Singh, Mahendra Prasad, ed. Lok Sabha Elections 1989: Indian 

Politics in 1990' s. New Delhi: Kalinga, 1992. 
Singh, Patwant, and Harji Malik, eds. Punjab: The Fatal Miscalcu- 
lation. New Delhi: Patwant Singh, 1985. 
Singh, Surinder Nihal. Rocky Road of Indian Democracy: Nehru to 

Narasimha Rao. New Delhi: Sterling, 1993. 
Sisson, Richard, and Stanley Wolpert, eds. Congress and Indian 

Nationalism: The Pre-Independence Phase. Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 1988. 
Sitaramayya, B. Pattabhi. History of the Indian National Congress. 

2 vols. Bombay: Padma, 1947. 
Smith, Bardwell L., ed. Essays on Gupta Culture. Delhi: Motilal 

Banarsidass, 1983. 
Smith, Donald E. India as a Secular State. Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1963. 
Smith, Vincent, ed. The Oxford History of India. 4th ed. New 

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981. 
South Asian Handbook: India and the Indian Sub-Continent, 1993. 

2d ed. Ed., Robert W. Bradnock. Bath, United Kingdom: 

Trade and Travel, 1992. 
Spate, O.H.K., A.T.A. Learmonth, A.M. Learmonth, and B.H. 

Farmer. India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography 

■with a Chapter on Ceylon. 3d ed., rev. London: Methuen, 1967. 
Spear, Thomas George Percival. A History of India, 2. Baltimore: 

Penguin, 1965. 



687 



India: A Country Study 

Spear, Thomas George Percival, ed. The Oxford History of Modern 
India, 1740-1975. 2d ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1978. 

Spencer, George W. "The Politics of Plunder: The Cholas in 

Eleventh Century Ceylon," Journal of Asian Studies, 35, No. 3, 

August 1976, 405-19. 
Srivastava, Ramesh Chandra. Judicial System in India. Lucknow: 

Print House (India), 1992. 
Stein, Burton. The New Cambridge History of India, I. 2: Vijayana- 

gara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 
Stein, Burton, ed. Essays on South India. Honolulu: University 

Press of Hawaii, 1975. 
Stein, Burton, ed. Peasant, State, and Society in Medieval South 

India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980. 
Stein, Burton, ed. Thomas Munro: The Origins of the Colonial State 

and His Vision of Empire. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 

1989. 

Stern, Robert W. Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Sub- 
continent. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Political Economy of Commerce: South- 
ern India, 1500-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1990. 

Subramaniam, Chitra. Bofors: The Story Behind the News. New 
Delhi: Viking, 1993. 

Tahseen, Rana. Education and Modernisation of Muslims in India. 
New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1993. 

Talwar, S.N. Under the Banyan Tree: The Communist Movement in 
India, 1920-1964. New Delhi: Allied, 1985. 

Tambiah, Stanley J. "Presidential Address: Reflections on Com- 
munal Violence in South Asia," Journal of Asian Studies, 49, 
No. 4, November 1990, 741-60. 

Tandon, Prakash. Punjabi Century, 1857-1947. Berkeley: Uni- 
versity of California Press, 1968. 

Tarn, W.W. The Greeks in Bactria and India. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1951. 

Taylor, Jay. The Dragon and the Wild Goose: China and India, with 
New Epilogue. New York: Praeger, 1991. 

Taylor, PJ.O. Chronicles of the Mutiny and Other Historical Sketches. 
New Delhi: Indus, 1992. 



688 



Bibliography 



Thapar, Romesh. These Troubled Times. Bombay: Popular Praka- 
shan, 1986. 

Thapar, Romila. Ashoka and the Decline of the Mauryas. London: 

Oxford University Press, 1961. 
Thapar, Romila. From Lineage to State: Social Formations in the 

Mid-First Millennium B.C. in the Ganga Valley. New Delhi: 

Oxford University Press, 1984. 
Thapar, Romila. A History of India, 1. Baltimore: Penguin, 1965. 
Thapar, Romila. Indian Tales. New Delhi: Puffin Books, 1991. 
Thapar, Romila. Interpreting Early India. New Delhi: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1992. 
Thapar, Romila. "The State as Empire." Pages 409-28 in Henry 

J. Claessen and Peter Skalnik, eds., The Study of the State. The 

Hague: Mouton, 1981. 
Thompson, Edward. The Making of the Indian Princes. London: 

Oxford University Press, 1943. Reprint. Columbia, Missouri: 

South Asia Books, 1980. 
Thurston, Edgar. Caste and Tribes of Southern India. 7 vols. 

Madras: Government Press, 1909. 
Tolkappiyar. Tolkappiam. Trans., E.S. Varadaraja Iyer. 2d ed. 

Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 1987. 
Tomlinson, B.R. The New Cambridge History of India, III. 3: The 

Economy of Modern India, 1860-1970. Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 1993. 
Trautmann, Thomas R. Dravidian Kinship. Cambridge Studies 

in Social Anthropology. New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 1981. 

Trautmann, Thomas R. Kautilya and the Arthasastra: A Statistical 

Study. Leiden: Brill, 1971. 
Trevelyan, Raleigh. The Golden Oriole: A 200-year History of an 

English Family in India. A Touchstone Book. New York: Simon 

and Schuster, 1988. 
Tully, Mark. India: Forty Years of Independence. New York: Bra- 

ziller, 1988. 

Tully, Mark, and Satish Jacob. Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi' s Last Battle. 

London: Cape, 1985. 
United Nations. Legal Department. Statement of Treaties and 

International Agreements Registered or Filed and Recorded with the 

Secretariat, 548. New York: 1965. 



689 



India: A Country Study 



United Nations. Legal Department. Statement of Treaties and 
International Agreements Registered or Filed and Recorded with the 
Secretariat, 560. New York: 1966. 

Venkataramanayya, N. The Eastern Calukyas ofVengi. Madras: 
Vedam Venkataray Sastry, 1950. 

Vincent, Rose, ed. The French in India: From Diamond Traders to 
Sanskrit Scholars. Trans., Latika Padgaonkar. Bombay: Popu- 
lar Prakashan, 1990. 

Washbrook, David A. The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The 
Madras Presidency, 1870-1920. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 1976. 

Washbrook, David A. "South Asia, The World System, and 
World Capitalism," Journal of Asian Studies, 49, No. 3, August 
1990, 479-508. 

Wheeler, Robert Eric Mortimer. Civilization of the Indus Valley 

and Beyond. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. 
Wheeler, Robert Eric Mortimer. Early India and Pakistan: To 

Ashoka. Rev. ed. Ancient Peoples and Places, No. 12. New 

York: Praeger, 1968. 
Who Are the Guilty ? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and 

Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November, 1984. 

2d ed. New Delhi: People's Union for Democratic Rights and 

People's Union for Civil Liberties, 1984. 
Wink, Andre. Al-Hind, the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, 1: 

Early Medieval India and the Expansion of Islam, 7th-llth Centu- 
ries. 2d. ed., rev. Leiden: Brill, 1991. 
Wolpert, Stanley. India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1991. 

Wolpert, Stanley. Jinnah of Pakistan. New York: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1984. 

Wolpert, Stanley. Nehru: A Tryst with Destiny. New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1996. 
Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. 4th ed. New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1992. 
Wolpert, Stanley. Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and Reform in the 

Making of Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 

1962. Reprint. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. 
Woodruff, Philip (pseud.). The Men Who Ruled India, 2: The 

Founders. London: Cape, 1963. 



690 



Bibliography 



Zimmer, Heinrich. The Art of Indian Asia. New York: Pantheon, . 
1955. 

Chapter 2 

Aggarwal, J.C Census of India, 1991: Historical and World Perspec- 
tive. New Delhi: Sultan Chand, 1991. 

Aggarwal, J.C. National Policy on Education: Agenda for India 
2001. New Delhi: Concept, 1989. 

Aggarwal, J.C, and Sarita Aggarwal. Education in India: A Com- 
parative Study of States and Union Territories. New Delhi: Con- 
cept, 1990. 

Association of Commonwealth Universities. Commonwealth Uni- 
versities Yearbook, 1990, 3. London: 1990. 

Baxi, Upendra, and Bhikhu Parekh, eds. Crisis and Change in 
Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, in association with The 
Book Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995. 

Bhambhri, CP. "Constitutional, Educational, and Inherited 
Social Imbalances." Pages 1-9 in Sheel C. Nuna, ed., Regional 
Disparity in Educational Development. New Delhi: National 
Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, 1993. 

Blaustein, Albert P., ed. "India Supplement," Constitutions of the 
Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana, 
April 1989. 

Blaustein, Albert P., and Gisbert Flanz, eds. "India," Constitu- 
tions of the Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs Ferry, New York: 
Oceana, October 1990. 

Bos, Eduard, Patience W. Stephens, My T. Vu, and Rodolfo A. 
Bulatao. Asia Region Population Projections, 1990-91 Edition. 
Working Paper Series, No. 599. Washington: Population and 
Human Resources Department, World Bank, February 1991. 

Bos, Eduard, My T. Vu, Ann Levin, and Rodolfo A. Bulatao. 
World Population Projections, 1992-93 Edition. Baltimore: 
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, for the World Bank. 

Bose, Ashish. India's Urban Population. 1991 Census Data: States, 
Districts, Cities, and Towns. New Delhi: Wheeler, 1994. 

Bose, Ashish. Population of India: 1991 Census Results and Method- 
ology. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1991. 



691 



India: A Country Study 



Caldwell, John C, Pat Caldwell, and RH. Reddy. The Causes of 
Demographic Change: Experimental Research in South Asia. Madi- 
son: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. 

Central Board for the Prevention and Control of Water Pollu- 
tion. River Basin Atlas of India. Calcutta: Center for Study of 
Man and Environment, Department of Geology, President 
College, 1985. 

Chapman, Graham P. "Change in the South Asian Core: Pat- 
terns of Growth and Stagnation in India." Pages 10-43 in 
Graham P. Chapman and Kathleen M. Baker, eds., The 
Changing Geography of Asia.hondon: Routledge, 1992. 

Durvasula, Ramesh. "Occupational Health Information Sys- 
tems in India." Pages 103-34 in Michael R. Reich and Toshit- 
eru Okubo, eds., Protecting Workers' Health in the Third World: 
National and International Strategies. 4th Takemi Symposium 
on International Health, 1990. New York: Auburn House, 
1992. 

Dwivedi, O.P, and Renu Khator. "India's Environmental Policy, 
Programs, and Politics." Pages 47-69 in O.P. Dwivedi and 
Dhirendra K. Vajpeyi, eds., Environmental Policies of the Third 
World: A Comparative Analysis. Contributions in Political Sci- 
ence, No. 350. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1995. 

Eaton, David J., ed. The Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin: Water 
Resource Cooperation Between Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. Aus- 
tin: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University 
of Texas at Austin, 1992. 

Fisher, William C, ed. Working Toward Sustainable Development: 
The N armada Dam Project. Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 1994. 

Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. This Fissured Land: 
An Ecological History of India. Berkeley: University of Califor- 
nia Press, 1993. 

Ghosh, Suresh Chandra. Education Policy in India since Warren 
Hastings. Calcutta: Naya Prokash, 1989. 

Gillespie, Stuart, and Geraldine McNeill. Food, Health, and Sur- 
vival in India and Developing Countries. Delhi: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1992. 

Griffin, Charles C. Health Care in Asia: A Comparative Study of 
Cost and Financing. World Bank Regional and Sectoral Stud- 
ies. Washington: World Bank, 1992. 



692 



Bibliography 



Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1992. 60th ed. Ed., S. 

Sarkar. Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1992. 
Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarkar. 

Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 
India. Meteorological Department. Climatological Atlas of India. 

New Delhi: 1981. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals: 

Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series-1, Paper-2 of 

1992. New Delhi: 1993. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals, 

Senes-1, Paper-1 of 1992, 1. New Delhi: 1993. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals, 

Series-1, Paper-1 of 1992, 2. New Delhi: 1993. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Provisional Population 

Totals: Workers and Their Distribution, Series-1, Paper-3 of 1991. 

New Delhi: November 1991. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Provisional Population 

Totals, Series-1 1 Paper-1 of 1991. New Delhi: March 1991. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Provisional Population 

Totals: Rural-Urban Distribution, Series-1, Paper-2 of 1991. New 

Delhi: August 1991. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Religion, Series-1, Paper- 

1 of 1995. New Delhi: January 1995. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India: A Reference Annual, 1988-89. New 

Delhi: December 1989. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1992: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: February 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1993: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: January 1994. 



693 



India: A Country Study 



India. Ministry of Planning. Department of Statistics. Central 
Statistical Organisation. Statistical Abstract 1990, India. New 
Delhi: 1990. 

India. Ministry of Planning. Department of Statistics. Central 
Statistical Organisation. Statistical Pocket Book, 1990. New 
Delhi: 1991. 

India. Ministry of Planning, Department of Statistics. Central 
Statistical Organisation. Statistical Pocket Book, 1991. New 
Delhi: 1992. 

"India." Pages 294-356 in The Far East and Australasia, 1995. 

26th ed. London: Europa, 1995. 
Jeffery, Roger. The Politics of Health in India. Comparative Stud- 
ies of Health Systems and Medical Care, No. 21. Los Angeles: 

University of California Press, 1988. 
Kaifi, Abdul Khaliq. So do-Economic Determinants of Health Systems 

in India under the Aspect of Colonial Structures. Frankfurt: R.G. 

Fischer Verlag, 1991. 
Katiyar, V.S. The Indian Monsoon and Its Frontiers. New Delhi: 

Inter-India, 1990. 
Kohli, Shanta. Family Planning in India: A Descriptive Analysis. 

New Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration, 1977. 
Kuriyan, George. India: A General Survey. New Delhi: National 

Book Trust, India, 1990. 
Ledbetter, Rosanna. "Thirty Years of Family Planning in India," 

Asian Survey, 24, No. 7, July 1984, 736-58. 
Livernash, Robert. "The Future of Populous Economies: China 

and India Shape Their Destinies," Environment, 37, No. 6, 

July-August 1995, 6-11, 25-34. 
Mamoria, C.B. Geography of India. Agra: Shiva Lai Agarwala, 

1975. 

Mathur, V.S. Studies in Indian Education. New Delhi: Arya Book 
Depot, 1968. 

Mehta, Jayshree P. "The Health Scenario in India." Pages 280- 
94 in Upendra Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh, eds., Crisis and 
Change in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 

Misra, Bhaskar D., Ali Ashraf, Ruth S. Simmons, and George B. 
Simmons. Organization for Change: A Systems Analysis of Family 
Planning in Rural India. New Delhi: Family Planning Associa- 
tion,1982. 



694 



Bibliography 



Mukherjee, Dilip. "The Struggle for Literacy in Asia," UNESCO 

Features [Paris], No. 764, 1981, 20-23. 
Mukherjee, Sudharisu Bhusan. The Age Distribution of the Indian 

Population: A Reconstruction for the States and Territories, 1881- 

1961. Honolulu: East-West Population Institute, East-West 

Center, 1976. 

Mundle, Sudipto. "Recent Trends in the Condition of Children 

in India: A Statistical Profile," World Development [London], 

12, No. 3, 1984, 297-308. 
Muthiah, S., ed. A Social and Economic Atlas of India. Oxford: 

Oxford, University Press, 1987. 
Narayana, G., and Kantner,J.F. Doing the Needful: The Dilemma of 

India's Population Policy. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 

1992. 

National Council of Educational Research and Training. Fifth 
All-India Educational Survey. 2 vols. New Delhi: March 1992. 

National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. 
Education for All by 2000: Indian Perspective. New Delhi: March 
1990. 

Ngapal, Smita. "Demographic Situation in India in 1991," Asian 
Profile [Hong Kong], 22, No. 2, April 1994, 161-74. 

Parry, Clive, ed. and annotator. The Consolidated Treaty Series, 
220: 1914-1915. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana, 1980. 

Piatt, Raye R., ed. India: A Compendium. New York: American 
Geographical Society, 1962. 

Population Reference Bureau. 1992 World Population Data Sheet 
of the Population Reference Bureau, Inc. : Demographic Data and 
Estimates for Countries and Regions of the World. Washington: 
1992. 

Pravin, Anand, and Albert P. Blaustein, eds. "India Supple- 
ment," Constitutions of the Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs 
Ferry, New York: Oceana, January 1992. 

Premi, Mahendra K. India's Population: Heading Towards a Bil- 
lion. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1991. 

Prescott, John Robert Victor. Map of Mainland Asia by Treaty. 
Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1975. 

Raina, B.L. Population Policy. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1988. 

Ramakrishna, Rao D.V.L.N., and R.C. Sharma, eds. India's Bor- 
ders, Ecology, and Security Perspectives. New Delhi: Scholars' 
Publishing Forum, 1991. 



695 



India: A Country Study 



Reich, Michael R., and Toshiteru Okuba, eds. Protecting Workers' 
Health in the Third World: National and International Strategies. 
New York: Auburn House, 1992. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Rouyer, Alwyn R. "The Political System and the Determinants 
of Family Planning Program Performance and Fertility 
Decline in India." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of 
the American Political Science Association, Washington, 
D.C., September 1984. 

Roy, S. Guha. "Demographic Trends in China and India," China 
Report [New Delhi], 30, No. 1, January-March 1994, 1-18. 

Saroj Prashant. Drug Abuse and Society. New Delhi: Ashish, 1993. 

Scalisi, Philip, and David Cook. Classic Mineral Localities of the 
World: Asia and Australia. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 
1983. 

Schwartzberg, Joseph E. "An American Perspective II," Asian 
Affairs, 22, No. 1, Spring 1995, 71-87. 

Schwartzberg, Joseph E., ed. A Historical Atlas of South Asia. 2d 
impression. Reference Series of Association for Asian Stud- 
ies, No. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Singh, Gopal. A Geography of India. Delhi: Atma Ram, 1976. 

Singhvi, A.K., and Amal Kar, eds. Thar Desert in Rajasthan: Land, 
Man, and Environment. Bangalore: Geological Society of 
India, 1991. 

Tan, Jee-pang, and Alain Mingat. Education in Asia: A Compara- 
tive Study of Cost and Financing. World Bank Regional and Sec- 
toral Studies. Washington: World Bank, 1992. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1988-89. 16th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1988. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1992-93. 20th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1992. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1994-95. 21st ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1994. 

Tirtha, Ranjit, and Gopal Krishan. Emerging India: A Geographi- 
cal Introduction. 2d ed. Ann Arbor: Conpub, 1992. 



696 



Bibliography 



Tyagi, P.N. Education for All: A Graphic Presentation. New Delhi: 
National Institute of Educational Planning and Administra- 
tion, August 1991. 

United Nations. Department of International Economic and 
Social Affairs, Statistical Office. 1990 Demographic Yearbook. 
42d ed. New York: 1992. 

United Nations. Department of International Economic and 
Social Affairs. World Population Monitoring 1991: With Special 
Emphasis on Age Structure. Population Studies, No. 126. ST/ 
ESA/SER.A/126. New York: 1992. 

United Nations. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and 
the Pacific. Population Division. "1993 ESCAP Population 
Datasheet." Bangkok: 1993. 

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza- 
tion. Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 
National Studies: India. Asia-Pacific Program of Education for 
All Series. Bangkok: 1991. 

United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza- 
tion. Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. 
Simultaneous Education for Women and Girls: Report of a Project. 
Asia-Pacific Program of Education for All Series. Bangkok: 
1989. 

United States. Bureau of the Census. World Population Profile: 

1994. Washington: February 1994. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Handbook of Interna- 
tional Economic Statistics. CPAS 94-1001. Washington: Septem- 
ber 1994. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. World Factbook, 

1995. Washington: 1995. 

United States. Congress. 102d, 1st Session. House of Represen- 
tatives. International AIDS Task Force. Report to the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives: The AIDS Epidemic in Asia. Wash- 
ington: GPO, 1991. 

United States. Department of Commerce. Economics and Sta- 
tistics Administration. Bureau of the Census. "Global Aging: 
Comparative Indicators and Future Trends." (Chart) Wash- 
ington: September 1991. 

United States. Department of Commerce. Economics and Sta- 
tistics Administration. Bureau of the Census. World Demo- 
graphic Data: 1994. WP/94-DD. Washington: February 1994. 



697 



India: A Country Study 

United States. Department of Commerce. Economics and Sta- 
tistics Administration. Bureau of the Census. World Popula- 
tion Profile: 1994. Comps., Ellen Jamison and Frank Hobbs. 
WP/94. Washington: February 1994. 

United States. Department of State. Country Reports on Human 
Rights Practices for 1993. Report submitted to United States 
Congress, 103d, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, and Senate, Committee on For- 
eign Relations. Washington: GPO, February 1994. 

Uplekar, Mukund. "Private Doctors and Occupational Health 
in India." Pages 134-54 in Michael R. Reich and Toshiteru 
Okubo, eds., Protecting Workers' Health in the Third World: 
National and International Strategies. 4th Takemi Symposium 
on International Health, 1990. New York: Auburn House, 
1992. 

Verghese, B.G. Integrated Water Resources Development and 
Regional Cooperation Within the Himalayan-Ganga-Brahmaputra- 
Barak Basin. New Delhi: Oxford University Press and IBH, 
1990. 

Verghese, B.G., and Ramaswamy R. Iyer, eds. Harnessing the 
Eastern Himalayan Rivers: Regional Cooperation in South Asia. 
New Delhi: Centre for Policy Research, 1993. 

Vittal Rao, Y Education and Learning in Andhra under the East 
India Company. Secunderabad: M. Vidyaranya Swamy, 1979. 

Weiner, Myron. The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and 
Education Policy in Comparative Perspective. Princeton: Prince- 
ton University Press, 1991. 

World Bank. Population and Human Resources Division. South 
Asia Country Department II. India: Policy and Finance Strate- 
gies for Strengthening Primary Health Care Services. Report No. 
10342-IN. Washington: May 15, 1995. 

The World of Learning, 1995. 45th ed. London: Europa, 1994. 

"World Population Data Sheet of the Population Reference 
Bureau, Inc." Washington: 1992. 

Yadava, Surendar S., and James G. Chadney. "Female Educa- 
tion, Modernity, and Fertility in India," Journal of Asian and 
Africa Studies [Leiden], 29, Nos. 1-2, January-April 1994, 
110-19. 



698 



Bibliography 



Zachariah, Matthew. "The Durability of Academic Secondary 
Education in India," Comparative Education Review, 14, No. 2, 
June 1970, 152-61. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Asiaweek [Hong Kong], 
1993; Far Eastern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1993-94; For- 
eign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Near East and 
South Asza, 1993-94; Man and Development [Chandigarh], 1993; 
Nature, 1993; New Scientist [London], 1991; New York Times, 
1994; and Washington Post, 1994.) 

Chapter 3 

Agrawal, S.P., andJ.C. Aggarwal, eds. Information India: 1991- 
92, Global View. Concepts in Communication, Informatics, 
and Librarianship, No. 47. New Delhi: Concept, 1993. 

Agwani, Mohammed S. "God's Government: Jama'at-i-Islami of 
India." Pages 259-77 in Hussin Mutalib and Taj ul-Islam 
Hashmi, eds., Islam, Muslims, and the Modern State: Case Stud- 
ies of Muslims in Thirteen Countries. New York: St. Martin's 
Press, 1994. 

Agwani, Mohammed S. Islamic Fundamentalism in India. Chandi- 
garh: Twenty-First Century India Society, 1986. 

Ahir, D.C. Buddhism in Modern India. Delhi: Sri Satguru, 1991. 

Ahmad, Aijuzuddin. Muslims in India: Their Educational, Demo- 
graphic, and Socio-Economic Status with Inter-Community Compar- 
isons Based on Field Survey Conducted in 1991. New Delhi: 
Inter-India, 1993. 

Alston, A.J. The Devotional Poems of Mirabai. Delhi: Motilal 
Banarsidass, 1980. 

Anand, Balwant Singh. Guru Tegh Bahadur: A Biography. New 
Delhi: Sterling, 1979. 

Andersen, Walter K., and Shridhar D. Damle. The Brotherhood in 
Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revival- 
ism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Aprem, Mar. Indian Christian Directory. Bangalore: Bangalore 
Parish Church of the East, 1984. 

Babb, Lawrence A. The Divine Hierarchy: Popular Hinduism in 
Central India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. 



699 



India: A Country Study 



Babb, Lawrence A. Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in 
Hindu Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1986. 

Banu, Zenab. Politics of Communalism. Bombay: Popular Praka- 
shan, 1989. 

Basham, A.L. The Origin and Development of Classical Hinduism. 

Ed. and completed by Kenneth G. Zysk. New York: Oxford 

University Press, 1989. 
Baxi, Upendra, and Bhikhu Parekh, eds. Crisis and Change in 

Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, in association with The 

Book Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995. 
Bharati, Agehananda. The Ochre Robe. London: Allen and 

Unwin, 1961. 

Bharati, Agehananda. The Tantric Tradition. London: Rider, 
1965. 

Bhardwaj, Surinder Mohan. Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India: 
A Study in Cultural Geography. Berkeley: University of Califor- 
nia Press, 1973. 

Bhargava, Rajeev. "Religious and Secular Identities." Pages 

317-49 in Upendra Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh, eds., Crisis and 

Change in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 
Bloomfield, Maurice, ed. and trans. Hymns of the Atharva-Veda. 

London: Clarendon Press, 1897. Reprint. London: Oxford 

University Press, 1978. 
Brandt, Michael. "A New Hindu Goddess," Hemisphere [Woden, 

Australia], 26, No. 6, May-June 1982, 380-84. 
Brockington, J.L. The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in Its Continuity 

and Diversity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981. 
Caplan, Lionel. Class and Culture in Urban India: Fundamentalism 

in a Christian Community. New York: Oxford University Press, 

1987. 

Carrithers, Michael, and Caroline Humphrey, eds. The Assembly 
of Listeners: Jains in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1991. 

Catholic Bishops' Conference of India. The Catholic Directory of 

India, 1990. New Delhi: 1990. 
Cenkner, William. A Tradition of Teachers: Sankara and the Jagad- 

gurus Today. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983. 
Champakalakshmi, R. Vaisnava Iconography in the Tamil Country. 

New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1981. 



700 



Bibliography 



Chopra, V.D., R.K. Mishra, and Nirmal Singh. Agony of Punjab. 
New Delhi: Patriot, 1984. 

Cole, W. Owen, and Piara Singh Sambhi. The Sikhs: Their Reli- 
gious Beliefs and Practices. London: Routledge and Kegan 
Paul, 1978. 

Contursi, Janet A. "Political Theology: Text and Practice in a 

Dalit Panther Community," Journal of Asian Studies, 52, No. 2, 

May 1993, 320-39. 
Courtright, Paul. Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings. 

New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 
Das, Veena. "Shakti Versus Sati: A Reading of the Santoshi Ma 

Cult," Manushi [Delhi], No. 49, November-December 1988, 

26-30. 

Davids, Thomas William Rhys, trans. Buddhist Suttas. Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 1881. Reprint. Sacred Books of the East, 

No. 11. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965. 
Davis, Richard H. "Indian Art Objects As Loot," Journal of Asian 

Studies, 52, No. 1, February 1993, 22-48. 
Desai, Kalpana S. Iconography of Visnu. New Delhi: Abhinav, 

1973. 

Dimmitt, Cornelle, and J.A. van Buttenen, ed. and trans. Classi- 
cal Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas. Philadel- 
phia: Temple University Press, 1978. 

Doniger, Wendy. Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism. 
Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1988. 

Downs, Frederick S. Christianity in North East India. Delhi: 
Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1983. 

Dundas, Paul. The Jains. Library of Religious Beliefs and Prac- 
tices. New York: Routledge, 1992. 

Dutt, Sukumar. Buddhist Monks and Monasteries of India. Lon- 
don: Allen and Unwin, 1962. 

Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204- 
1760. Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies, No. 17. Ber- 
keley: University of California Press, 1993. 

Eaton, Richard M. Sufis of Bijapur, 1300-1700: Social Roles of 
Sufis in Medieval India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1978. 

Eck, Diana. Banares: City of Light. New York: Knopf, 1982. 



701 



India: A Country Study 



Embree, Ainslie T. Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in 
Modern India. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society. 
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 

Engineer, Ashgar Ali, ed. Communal Riots in Post-Independence 
India. Hyderabad: Sangam, 1984. 

Foster, Georgana M. "A Popular North Indian Pilgrimage Site: 
The Shrine of Vaishno Devi in Jammu." Paper presented at 
the Conference on Pilgrimage, Pittsburgh, May 1991. 

Frith, Nigel. The Legend of Krishna. New York: Schocken Books, 
1976. 

Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von. Tribal Populations and Cul- 
tures of the Indian Subcontinent. Handbuch der Orientalistik. 
Zweite Abteilung, Indien; 7. Bd. Leiden: Brill, 1985. 

Fuller, Christopher J. Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South 
Indian Temple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. 

Gibb, H.A.R., andJ.H. Kramers, eds. Shorter Encyclopaedia of 
Islam. Leiden: Brill, 1974. 

Goldman, Robert P., trans. The Ramayana ofValrniki: An Epic of 
Ancient India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. 

Gonda, Jan. Aspects of Early Visnuism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 
1969. 

Gopal, Sarvepalli, ed. Anatomy of a Confrontation: The Babn 

Masjid-Ramjamnabhumi Issue. New Delhi: Viking, 1991. 
Grewel,J.S. The New Cambridge History of India, 113: The Sikhs of 

the Punjab. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 
Gupta, Giri Raj, ed. Religion in Modern India. Main Currents in 

Indian Sociology, No. 5. New Delhi: Vikas, 1983. 
Gupta, Sanjukta, Dirk Jan Hoens, and Teun Goudrianan. 

Hindu Tantrism. Leiden: Brill, 1979. 
Hanson, James A. India: Recent Developments and Medium-Term 

Issues. A World Bank Country Study. Washington: World 

Bank, 1989. 

Harman, William. The Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess. 

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. 
Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism: Teachings. History, 

and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 
Hasnain, Nadeem, and Sheikh Abrar Husain. Shias and Shia 

Islam in India: A Study in Society and Culture. New Delhi: Har- 

nam, 1988. 



702 



Bibliography 



Hawley, John Stratton. Krishna, the Butter Thief. Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1983. 
Hawley, John Stratton. Songs of the Saints of India. New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1988. 
Hay, Stephen, ed. Sources of Indian Tradition, 2: Modern India and 

Pakistan. 2d ed. Introduction to Oriental Civilizations. New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 
Hembram, PC. Sari-Sarna (Santhal Religion). Delhi: Mittal, 1988. 
Hiltebeitel, Alf. Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the 

Guardians of Popular Hinduism. Albany: State University of 

New York, 1989. 
Hiltebeitel, Alf. The Cult of Draupadi. Chicago: University of 

Chicago Press, 1988. 
Hiltebeitel, Alf. The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahabharata. 

Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. 
Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarker. 

Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 
Hluna, John V. Church and Political Upheaval in Mizoram: A Study 

of the Impact of Christianity on the Political Development in Mizo- 
ram. Aisawl: Mizo History Association, 1985. 
Hopkins, Thomas J. The Hindu Religious Tradition. Encino, Cali- 
fornia: Dickenson, 1971. 
Hume, Robert Ernest, trans. The Thirteen Principle Upanishads. 

2d ed., rev. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. 
Huntington, Susan L. The Arts of Ancient India: Buddhist, Hindu, 

and Jain. New York: Weatherhill, 1985. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 

Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Religion, Series-1, Paper- 

1 of 1995, New Delhi: January 1995. 
Isenberg, Shirley Berry. India's Bene-Israel: A Comprehensive 

Inquiry and Sourcebook. Berkeley: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 

1988. 

Israel, Benjamin J. The Bene-Israel of India: Some Studies. Bombay: 
Orient Longman, 1984. 

Israel, Benjamin J. The Jews of India. New Delhi: Centre for Jew- 
ish and Inter-Faith Studies, Jewish Welfare Association, 1982. 

Jackson, Paul, ed. The Muslims of India: Beliefs and Practices. Ban- 
galore: Theological Publications in India, 1988. 

Jain, Satish Kumar, and Kamal Chand Sognai. Perspectives on 
Jain Philosophy and Culture. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1985. 



703 



India: A Country Study 



Jaini, Padmanabh S. The JainaPath of Purification. Berkeley: Uni- 
versity of California Press, 1979. 

Jayatilleke, Kulatissa Nanda. The Message of the Buddha. New 
York: Free Press, 1974. 

Jha, Prem Shankar. India: A Political Economy of Stagnation. Bom- 
bay, Oxford University Press, 1980. 

Keith, Arthur Berriedale. The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda 
and Upanishads. 2 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 
1925. Reprint. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1971. 

Khare, Ravindra S. The Hindu Hearth and Home. Durham, North 
Carolina: Carolina Academic, 1976. 

Kinsley, David R. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine 
in the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley: University of Cali- 
fornia Press, 1988. 

Kinsley, David R. Hinduism: A Cultural Perspective. Englewood 
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1982. 

Kinsley, David R. The Sword and the Flute: Kali and Krsna, Dark 
Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in Hindu Mythology. 
Hermeneutic Studies in the History of Religion, No. 3. 
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. 

Knipe, David M. Hinduism: Experiments in the Sacred. San Fran- 
cisco: Harper, 1991. 

Kramrisch, Stella. Manifestations of Shiva. Philadelphia: Phila- 
delphia Museum of Art, 1981. 

Kulke, Eckehard. The Parsees in India: A Minority as Agent of 
Social Change. Munich: Weltforum Verlag, 1974. 

Kumar, Akhilesh. Communal Riots in India: Study of Social and 
Economic Aspects. New Delhi: Commonwealth, 1991. 

LaMotte, Etienne. History of Indian Buddhism: From the Origins to 
the SakaEra. Trans., Sara Wenn-Boin. Publications de l'insti- 
tut orientaliste de Louvain, No. 36. Louvain-la-Neuve: Insti- 
tut orientaliste, Universite Catholique de Louvain, 1988. 

Ling, Trevor. Buddhist Revival in India: Aspects of the Sociology of 
Buddhism. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. 

McLeod, W.H. The Evolution of the Sikh Community. Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1975. 

McLeod, W.H. Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Oxford: Clar- 
endon Press, 1968. 

McLeod, W.H. The Sikhs: History, Religion, and Society. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1989. 



704 



Bibliography 



Madan, T.N. "Whither Indian Secularism?" Modern Asian Studies 
[London], 27, Pt. 3, July 1993, 667-97. 

Mallik, Madhusudan. Introduction to Parsee Religion, Customs, and 
Ceremonies. Santiniketan: Visva-Bharati Research Publications 
Committee, 1980. 

Mann, R.S., and Vijoy S. Sahay. Nature-Man-Spirit Complex in 
Tribal India. New Delhi: Concept, 1982. 

Metcalf, Barbara D. "Presidential Address: Too Little Too 
Much: Reflections on Muslims in the History of India," Jour- 
nal of Asian Studies, 54, No. 4, November 1995, 951-67. 

Miller, Barbara Stoler, trans. The Bhagav ad-Git a: Krishna's Coun- 
sel in Time of War. New York: Bantam, 1986. 

Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Mean- 
ing andForms. New Delhi: B.I. Publications, 1977. 

Mokashi, D.B. Palkhi: An Indian Pilgrimage. Trans., Philip C. 
Engblom and Eleanor Zelliot. Albany: State University of 
New York Press, 1987. 

Mujib, Muhammad. The Indian Muslims. Montreal: McGill Uni- 
versity Press, 1967. 

Murthy, R. Krishna. A Study of Tirumala-Tirupati Devasthanams 
Educational Institutions (Higher Education) . Tirupati: Tirupati- 
Tirumala Devasthanam, 1984. 

Narasimhan, C.V. The Mahabharata: An English Version Based on 
Selected Verses. New York: Columbia University Press, 1965. 

Nayar, Kuldip, and Kushwant Singh. Tragedy of Punjab: Operation 
Bluestar and After. New Delhi: Vision Books, 1984. 

Netton, Ian Richard. A Popular Dictionary of Islam. Atlantic 
Highlands, Newjersey: Humanities Press, 1992. 

O'Connel, Joseph T, Milton Israel, and Willard G. Oxtoby, eds. 
Sikh History and Religion in the Twentieth Century. New Delhi: 
Manohar, 1990. 

O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, ed. and trans. Hindu Myths: A 
Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit. Baltimore: Penguin, 
1975. 

O'Flaherty, Wendy Doniger, ed. and trans. The Rig Veda: An 

Anthology. New York: Penguin, 1981. 
Pangborn, Cyrus R. Zoroastrianism: A Beleaguered Faith. New 

Delhi: Vikas, 1982. 
Parasuram, TV. India's Jewish Heritage. New Delhi: Sagar, 1982. 



705 



India: A Country Study 



Patterson, Maureen L.P., in collaboration with William J. 
Alspaugh. South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographic Synthesis. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 

Peterson, Indira Viswanathan. Poems to Siva: The Hymns of the 
Tamil Saints. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. 

Prebish, Charles S. Historical Dictionary of Buddhism. Metuchen, 
New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1993. 

Raj, A.R. Victor. The Hindu Connection: Roots of the New Age. Con- 
cordia Scholarship Today Series. St. Louis: Concordia, 1995. 

Raj, V. Manuel. A Santal Theology of Liberation. New Delhi: 
Uppal, 1990. 

Ramanujan, A.K, trans. Hymns for the Drovming: Poems for Visnu 
ofNammalvar. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. 

Religions of India: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zorastri- 
anism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. New Delhi: Clarion, 
1983. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Robinson, Richard H., and Willard J. Johnson. The Buddhist 
Religion: A Historical Introduction. Belmont, California: Wads- 
worth, 1977. 

Saha, M.N., and N.C. Lahiri. History of the Calendar in Different 

Countries Through the Ages. New Delhi: Council of Scientific 

and Industrial Research, 1992. 
Sangave, Vilas Adinath./aina Community: A Social Survey. 2d ed., 

rev. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1980. 
Sarma, D.S., trans. The Upanishads: An Anthology. Bombay: 

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1964. 
Schimmel, Annemarie. Islam in the Indian Subcontinent. Leiden: 

Brill, 1980. 

Schuhmacher, Stephan, and Gert Woerner, eds. The Encyclope- 
dia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Boston: Shambhala, 
1989. 

Sen, Makhan Lai, trans. The Ramayana ofValmiki. New Delhi: 

Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978. 
Sethi, VK. Kabir: The Weaver of God's Name. Amritsar: Radha 

Soami Satsang Beas, 1984. 



706 



Bibliography 



Shearer, Alistair, and Peter Russell, trans. The Upanishads. New 
York: Harper and Row, 1978. Reprint. Boston: Unwin Paper- 
backs, 1989. 

Shulman, David, trans. Songs of the Harsh Devotee: The Tevaram of 
Cuntaramurttinayanar. Philadelphia: Department of South 
Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1990. 

Singh, Gopal, trans. Sri Guru Granth Sahib: An Anthology. Cal- 
cutta: M.P. Birla Foundation, 1989. 

Sinha, Abdesh Prasad. Religious Life in Tribal India: A Case-Study 
ofDugh Kharia. New Delhi: Classical, 1989. 

Sivaramamurti, C. Sri Lakshmi in Indian Art and Thought. New 
Delhi: Kanak, 1982. 

Srivastava, Sushil. The Disputed Mosque: A Historical Inquiry. New 
Delhi: Vistar, 1991. 

Stevenson, Margaret Sinclair. The Rites of the Twice-Born. Lon- 
don: Oxford University Press, 1920. 

Thomas, Edward J. The Life of Buddha as Legend and History. 
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1927. 

Timberg, Thomas A., ed.Jews in India. New Delhi: Vikas, 1986. 

Tisserant, Eugene Cardinal. Eastern Christianity in India: A His- 
tory of the Syro-Malabar Church from the Earliest Time to the 
Present Day. Trans., E.R. Hambye. London: Longmans, 
Green, 1957. 

Torwesten, Hans. Vedanta: Heart of Hinduism. New York: Grove 

Weidenfeld, 1985. 
Troisi, J. Tribal Religion: Religious Beliefs and Practices among the 

Santals. New Delhi: Manohar, 1978. 
Troll, Christian W., ed. Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, 

History, and Significance. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 

1989. 

Van der Veer, Peter. Gods on Earth: The Management of Religious 

Experience and Identity in a North Indian Pilgrimage Center. 

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Athlone, 1988. 
Van der Veer, Peter. "Playing or Praying: A Sufi Saint's Day in 

Surat," fournal of Asian Studies, 51, No. 3, August 1992, 545- 

64. 

Van der Veer, Peter. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in 
India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 

Viswanathan, Lakshmi. Bharatanatyam: The Tamil Heritage. 
Madras: Sri Kala Chakra Trust, 1984. 



707 



India: A Country Study 



Waghorne, Joanne Punzo, and Norman Cutler, eds. Gods of 
Flesh, Gods of Stone: The Embodiment of Divinity in India. Cham- 
ber sburg, Pennsylvania: Anima, 1985. 

Worthington, Vivian. A History of Yoga. London: Routledge and 
Kegan Paul, 1982. 

Zaehner, Robert Charles. Hinduism. 2d ed. New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1966. 

Zvelebil, Kamil V. The Smile of Murugan: On Tamil Literature of 
South India. Leiden: Brill, 1973. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Far Eastern Economic Review 
[Hong Kong], 1993; Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 
Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, 1995; India Today [New 
Delhi], 1992; and Washington Post, 1994.) 

Chapter 4 

Abel, Evelyn. The Anglo-Indian Community: Survival in India. 

Delhi: Chanakya, 1988. 
Abraham, Margaret. "Ethnic Identity and Marginality among 

Indian Jews in Contemporary India," Ethnic Groups, 9, No. 1, 

1991, 33-60. 

Aggarwal, J.C., and Sarita Aggarwal. Education in India: A Com- 
parative Study of States and Union Territories. New Delhi: Con- 
cept, 1990. 

Aggarwal, San tosh. Three Language Formula: An Educational Prob- 
lem. New Delhi: Sian, 1991. 

Agnihotri, R. K., and A. L. Khanna. Second Language Acquisition: 
Socio-Cultural and Linguistic Aspects of English in India, 1: 
Research in Applied Linguistics. New Delhi: Sage, 1994. 

Akbar, M.J. The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation's Unity. Lon- 
don: Penguin, 1985. 

Andronov, M.S. Dravidian Languages. Trans., D.M. Segal. Mos- 
cow: Nauka, 1970. 

Annamalai, A. "Bilingualism Through Schooling in India," 
Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics [New Delhi], 11, No. 2, 
June 1985, 65-78. 

Annamalai, E., ed. Bilingualism and Achievement in School. 
Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages, 1980. 



708 



Bibliography 



Arnold, Adiss, ed. Crisis in North East India. Madras: Gurukul 
Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1981. 

Arslan, Mehdi, andjanaki Rajan, eds. Communalism in India: 
Challenge and Response. New Delhi: Manohar, 1994. 

Ashraf, Ali, ed. Ethnic Identity and National Integration. New 
Delhi: Concept, 1994. 

Axelrod, Paul. "Cultural and Historical Factors in the Popula- 
tion Decline of the Parsis of India," Population Studies [Lon- 
don], 44, No. 2, November 1990, 401-19. 

Banakar, Mahadev. Safeguards for Linguistic Minorities in India: 
Karnataka Sets a Model. Bangalore: Anubhava Mantapa 
Prakashan, 1982. 

Basu, Sajal. Jharkhand Movement: Ethnicity and Culture of Silence. 
Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1994. 

Basu, Sajal. Regional Movements: Politics of Language, Ethnicity- 
Identity. Monograph No. 76. Shimla: Indian Institute of 
Advanced Study; New Delhi: Manohar, 1992. 

Baxi, Upendra, and Bhikhu Parekh, eds. Crisis and Change in 
Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, in association with The 
Book Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995. 

Bhatnagar, Satyavan, and Pradeep Kumar, eds. Regional Political 
Parties in India. Panjab University D.C.C. Publications, No. 4. 
New Delhi: Ess, 1988. 

Bloch, Jules. The Grammatical Structure ofDravidian Languages. 
Pune: Decan College Post-graduate and Research Institute, 
1954. 

Brass, Paul R. "Ethnic Groups and the State." Pages 1-56 in 
Paul R. Brass, ed., Ethnic Groups and the State. Totowa, New 
Jersey: Barnes and Noble, 1985. 

Brass, Paul R. Language, Religion, and Politics in North India. Lon- 
don: Cambridge University Press, 1974. 

Brass, Paul R. The New Cambridge History of India, TV. 1: The Poli- 
tics of India since Independence. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1994. 

Breton, Ronald J.L. Atlas geographique des langues et des ethnies de 
ITnde et du subcontinent: Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, 
Bhoutan, et Sikkim. Quebec: Presses de l'universite Laval, 
1976. 



709 



India: A Country Study 



Breton, Ronald J.L. Geolinguistics: Language Dynamics andEthno- 
linguistic Geography. Trans, and expanded, Harold F. Schiff- 
man. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991. 

Bright, William. Language Variation in South Asia. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Cabinetmaker, Perin H. Parsis and Marriage. Bombay: 1991. 

Cappieri, Mario. The Andamanese: Cultural Elements, Elements of 
Demogenetics, Physical Anthropology, and Radiology. Miami: Field 
Research Projects, 1974. 

Carmel, J. With the Scattered in the East. Trans., Charles Weis. 
Jerusalem: Israel Publishing Institute, 1960. 

Chaklader, Snehamoy. Linguistic Minority as a Cohesive Force in 
Indian Federal Process. New Delhi: Associated, 1981. 

Chaklader, Snehamoy. Sociolinguistics: A Guide to Language Prob- 
lems in India. New Delhi: Mittal, 1990. 

Chatterji, Suniti Kumar. Select Papers (Angla-nibandhachyana.) . 3 
vols. New Delhi: People's, 1972-83. 

Chaturvedi, M.G. Third All-India Education Survey: Languages 
and Media of Instruction in Indian Schools. New Delhi: National 
Council of Educational Research and Training, 1981. 

Chaudhuri, A.B. "The Jharkhand Movement: A Study," Indian 
Defence Review [New Delhi], 10, No. 4, October-December 
1995, 47-55. 

Chauhan, R.R.S. Africans in India: From Slavery to Royalty. New 
Delhi: Asian Publication Services, 1995. 

Cohn, Bernard S. An Anthropologist among the Historians and 
Other Essays. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987. 

Cohn, Bernard S. India: The Social Anthropology of a Civilization. 
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 

Comrie, Bernard, ed. The Major Languages of South Asia, the Mid- 
dle East, and Africa. London: Routledge, 1990. 

Crane, Robert I., ed. Regions and Regionalism in South Asian Stud- 
ies: An Exploratory Study; Papers Presented at a Symposium held at 
Duke University, April 7-9, 1966. Durham, North Carolina: 
Program in Comparative Studies on Southern Asia, Duke 
University, 1967. 

Das, Victor. Jharkhand: Caste over the Graves. Tribal Studies of 
India Series, No. 155. New Delhi: Inter-India, 1992. 



710 



Bibliography 



Das Gupta, Jyotirindra. Language Conflict and National Develop- 
ment: Group Politics and National Language Policy in India. 
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. 

Das Gupta, Jyotirindra, and John J. Bumperz. "Language Com- 
munication and Control in North India." Pages 151-66 in 
Joshua A. Fishman, Charles A. Ferguson, and Jyotirindra Das 
Gupta, eds., Language Problems of Developing Nations. New 
York: Wiley, 1968. 

Datta, Prabhat Kumar. Regionalism of Indian Politics. New Delhi: 
Sterling, 1993. 

Davidson, T.T.L. "Indian Bilingualism and the Evidence of the 
Census of 1961," Lingua [Amsterdam], 22, Nos. 2-3, April 
1969, 176-96. 

Deshpande, CD. India: A Regional Interpretation. New Delhi: 
Indian Council of Social Science Research and Northern 
Book Centre, 1992. 

Deutsch, Karl Wolfgang. Nationalism and Social Communication: 
An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality. Cambridge: 
Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- 
ogy; and New York: Wiley, 1953. 

Devalle, Susana B.C. Discourses of Ethnicity: Culture and Protest in 
Jharkhand. New Delhi: Sage, 1992. 

Dhamothara, Ayyadurai, ed. Word-Borrowing and Word-Making in 
Modern South Asian Languages. Heidelberg: South Asia Insti- 
tute, University of Heidelberg, 1978. 

Dhar, Pannalal. India and Her Domestic Problems: Religion, State, 
and Secularism. Calcutta: Punthi-Pustak, 1993. 

Dharwadker, Vinay. "Dalit Poetry in Maharashtra," World Litera- 
ture Today, 68, No. 2, Spring 1994, 319-24. 

Dhoundiyal, N.C., Vijaya R. Dhoundiyal, and S.K. Sharma, eds. 
The Separate Hill State, 2: English. Almora: Shree Almora Book 
Depot, 1993. 

Drury, David. The Iron Schoolmaster: Education, Employment, and 
the Family in India. Delhi: Hindustani, 1993. 

Dua, Hans Raj. Linguistic Repertoire, Communication, and Interac- 
tion Networks in Industry. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian 
Languages, 1986. 

Dutta, Pratap C. The Great Andamanese: Past and Present. Cal- 
cutta: Anthropological Survey of India, 1978. 



711 



India: A Country Study 

Eapen, K.E. "Daily Newspapers in India: Their Status and Prob- 
lems, "Journalism Quarterly, 44, No. 3, Autumn 1967, 520-32. 

Emeneau, Murray B. Dravidian Linguistics; Ethnology and Folk- 
tales: Collected Papers. Annamalainagar: Annamalai University, 
1976. 

Emeneau, Murray B. Language and Linguistic Area: Essays. Lan- 
guage Science and National Development Series. Stanford: 
Stanford University Press, 1980. 

Ezra, Esmond David. Turning Back the Pages: A Chronicle of Cal- 
cutta Jewry. 2 vols, and 1 sound cassette. London: Brookside 
Press, 1986. 

Fishman, Joshua A., Charles A. Ferguson, and Jyotirindra Das 
Gupta, eds. Language Problems of Developing Nations. New 
\brk: Wiley, 1968. 

Fishman, Rich. "Manipravalam: Threading the Necklace of a 
Language for Kerala," Abstracts of the Annual Meeting of the 
Association for Asian Studies, Inc. Ann Arbor: Association for 
Asian Studies, 1995, 177. 

Fox, Richard G. "Hindu Nationalism in the Making, or the Rise 
of the Hindian." Pages 63-80 in Richard G. Fox, ed., Nation- 
alist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures. American 
Ethnological Society Monograph Series, No. 2. Washington: 
American Anthropological Association, 1990. 

Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von. Tribal Populations and Cul- 
tures of the Indian Subcontinent. Handbuch der Orientalistik. 
Zweite Abteilung; 7. Bd. Leiden: Brill, 1985. 

Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von. Tribes of India: The Struggle 
for Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. 

Gaeffke, Peter. Hindi Literature in the Twentieth Century. History 
of Indian Literature, 8: Modern Indo-Aryan Literatures 
(fasc. 5). Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1978. 

Galanter, Marc. Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward 
Classes in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1984. 

Gangadharan, K.K., ed. Indian National Consciousness: Growth 
and Development. New Delhi: Kalamkar Prakashan, 1972. 

George, Sudhir Jacob. "The Bodo Movement in Assam: Unrest 
to Accord," Asian Survey, 34, No. 10, October 1994, 878-92. 

Grimes, Barbara E, ed. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 12th 
ed. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1992. 



712 



Bibliography 



Hart, George Luzerne. The Relation Between Tamil and Classical 
Sanskrit Literature. History of Indian Literature, 10: Dravidian 
Literature (fasc. 2). Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1976. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarkar. 
Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 

India. Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India. Report 
of the Commissioner for Linguistic Minorities in India. New Delhi: 
1957-58. 

India. Committee of Parliament on Official Language. Report. 

New Delhi: 1986. 
India. Group on Minorities Education. Report of the Group on 

Minorities Education. New Delhi: Government of India Press, 

1991. 

India. Linguistic Survey. Linguistic Survey of India. 12 vols. Ed., 
George Grierson. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of 
Printing, India, 1903-23. Reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsi- 
dass, 1968. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1981: Series-1. Paper 4 of 1984. 
Household Population by Religion of Head of Household. New 
Delhi: 1984. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1981: Series-1, Part TVB(i): 
Population by Language /Mother-Tongue (Table C-7). New Delhi: 
May 1991. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals: 
Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series-1, Paper-2 of 
1992. New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals, 
Series-1, Paper-1 of 1992, 2. New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Union Primary Census 
Abstract for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. India-State 
Level. Series-1, Paper-1 of 1993. New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Human Resources Development. Committee 
for Promotion of Urdu. Report of the Committee for Promotion of 
Urdu, 1975. 3d ed. New Delhi: 1990. 



713 



India: A Country Study 

India. West Bengal. Director of Information. Gorkhaland Agita- 
tion: Facts and Issues: Information Document II. Calcutta: 1987. 

India. West Bengal. Director of Information. Gorkhaland Agita- 
tion: The Issues: An Information Document. Calcutta: 1986. 

International Conference on Language and National Develop- 
ment. The Case of India. Souvenir, Department of Linguistics, 
Osmania University, 25 Years. Silver Jubilee Year, 1962-1987. 
Hyderabad: Organizing Committee, ICLAND (India), 1987. 

Isenberg, Shirley Berry. India's Bene-Israel: A Comprehensive 
Inquiry and Sourcebook. Berkeley: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 
1988. 

Jayadas, Edwin. Tribals in our Global Village: Agenda for the Third 
Millenium. Bangalore: Pan Media, 1992. 

Jebasingh, Ananthi. Script for Tribal Languages for the Promotion of 
Literacy. Delhi: Amar Prakashan, 1990. 

Kachru, Braj B. The Indianization of English: The English Lan- 
guage in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983. 

Kachru, Braj B., and S.N. Sridhar, eds. Aspects of Sociolinguistics 
in South Asia. International Journal of the Sociology of Lan- 
guage, No. 16. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. 

Kakar, Sudhir. The Colors of Violence: Cultural Identities, Religion, 
and Conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 

Karat, Prakash. Language and Nationality Politics in India. Bom- 
bay: Orient Longman, 1973. 

Katz, Nathan, and Ellen S. Goldberg. The Last Jews of Cochin: 
Jewish Identity in Hindu India. Columbia: University of South 
Carolina Press, 1993. 

Kesavan, B.S. History of Printing and Publishing in India: A Story of 
Cultural Re-awakening. 2 vols. New Delhi: National Book 
Trust, 1984-85. 

Khan, Vahiduddin. Indian Muslims: The Need for a Positive Out- 
look. New Delhi: Al-Risala, 1994. 

Khubchandani, Lachman Mulchand. Language, Culture, and 
Nation-Building: Challenges of Modernisation. New Delhi: 
Indian Institute of Advanced Study, in association with 
Manohar Publications, Shimla, 1991. 

Khubchandani, Lachman Mulchand. Language Demography: Col- 
lected Papers. Mimeograph Series: Studies in Linguistics, No. 
3. Pune: Centre for Communication Studies, 1981. 



714 



Bibliography 



Khubchandani, Lachman Mulchand. Language Planning: Miscel- 
laneous Papers. Pune: Centre for Communication Studies, 
1981. 

Khubchandani, Lachman Mulchand. Plural Languages, Plural 
Cultures: Communication, Identity, and Sociopolitical Change in 
Contemporary India. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press for 
the East-West Center, 1983. 

Kliuev, Boris I. India, National and Language Problem. New Delhi: 
Jullundur; and Bangalore: Sterling, 1981. 

Krishnamurti, Bh., ed. South Asian Language: Structure, Conver- 
gence, and Diglossia. MLBD Series in Linguistics, No. 3. Delhi: 
Motilal Banarsidass, 1986. 

Kumar, Purushottam. History and Administration of Tribal Chotan- 
agpur. Delhi: Atma Ram, 1994. 

Labru, G. L. Indian Newspaper English. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 
1984. 

Lahiri-dutt, Kuntala. In Search of a Homeland: Anglo-Indians and 
McCluskiegunge. Calcutta: Minerva, 1990. 

Lelyveld, David. "Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hin- 
dustani," Comparative Studies in Society and History [Cam- 
bridge], 25, No. 4, October 1993, 665-82. 

Leshnik, Lawrence Saadia, and Gunther-Dietz Sontheimer, eds. 
Pastoralists and Nomads in South Asia. Schriftenreihe des 
Sudasien-Instituts der Universitat Heidelberg. Wiesbaden: 
Harrasowitz, 1975. 

Limaye, Madhu. Religious Bigotry: A Threat to Ordered State. Delhi: 
Ajanta, 1994. 

McDonald, Ellen E. "The Growth of Regional Consciousness in 
Maharashtra," Indian Economic and Social History Review 
[Delhi], 5, No. 3, September 1968, 223-43. 

McGregor, Ronald Stuart. Hindi Literature of the Nineteenth and 
Early Twentieth Centuries. History of Indian Literature, 8, Pt. 1: 
Modern Indo-Aryan Literatures (fasc. 2). Wiesbaden: Harra- 
sowitz, 1974. 

Madan, T.N. "Whither Indian Secularism?" Modern Asian Stud- 
ies, [London], 27, Pt. 3, July 1993, 667-97. 

Mahmood, Tahir, ed. Minorities and State at the Indian Law: An 
Anthology. New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1991. 



715 



India: A Country Study 



Maloney, Clarence, ed. Language and Civilization Change in 
South Asia. Contributions to Asian Studies, No. 11. Leiden: 
Brill, 1978. 

Mandelbaum, David G. Society in India: Continuity and Change. 2 
vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. 

Mann, Rann Singh. Culture and Integration of Indian Tribes. 
New Delhi: M.D. Publications, 1993. 

Manoharan S. A Descriptive and Comparative Study of Andamanese 
Language. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India for Min- 
istry of Human Resource Development, 1989. 

Marriott, McKim. "Changing Channels of Cultural Transmis- 
sion in Indian Civilization." Pages 66-74 in Verne F. Ray, ed., 
Intermediate Societies, Social Mobility, and Communication: Pro- 
ceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Eth- 
nological Society. Seattle: 1959. 

Masica, Colin P. Defining a Linguistic Area: South Asia. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1976. 

Masica, Colin P. The Indo-Aryan Languages. New York: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1991. 

Misra, Dipti. "Konkani: Language-Dialect Controversy," Interna- 
tional Journal ofDravidian Linguistics [Thiruvananthapuram] , 
16, No. 1, January 1987, 108-19. 

Misra, Kamal Kant. Tribal Elites and Social Transformation. New 
Delhi: Inter-India, 1994. 

Misra, P.K., and K.C. Malhotra, eds. Nomads in India: Proceedings 
of the National Seminar. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of 
India, 1982. 

Misra, Satya Swarup. Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach. New 
Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1992. 

Mitra, Roma. Caste Polarization and Politics. Patna: Syndicate 
Publication (India), 1992. 

Mitra, Subrata K. "Crowds and Power: Democracy and the Cri- 
sis of 'Governability' in India." Pages 216-45 in Upendra 
Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh, eds., Crisis and Change in Contempo- 
rary India. New Delhi: Sage, in association with The Book 
Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995. 

Moore, Gloria Jean. The Anglo-Indian Vision. Delhi: B.R. Pub- 
lishing, 1987. 

Moseley, Christopher, and R. E. Asher, eds. Atlas of the World's 
Languages. New York: Routledge, 1994. 



716 



Bibliography 



Munda, Ramdayal. The Jharkhand Movement: Retrospect and Pros- 
pect: A Report Submitted to Home Minister, Buta Singh. Ranchi: 
Jharkhand Co-ordination Committee, 1990. 

Muthiah, S., ed. A Social and Economic Atlas of India. Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Naidu, K. Munirathna, ed. Peasant Movements in India. New 
Delhi: Reliance, 1994. 

Naik. T.B., and CP. Pandya. The Sidis of Gujurat: A Socioeco- 
nomic Study and Development Plan. Tribal Research and Train- 
ing Institute Publication, No. 32. Ahmedabad: Tribal 
Research and Training Institute, 1993. 

Nairn, CM. "The Situation of the Urdu Writer: A Letter from 
Bar a Banki, December 1993/February 1994," World Literature 
Today, 68, No. 2, Spring 1994, 246-46. 

Nanavutty, Piloo. The Parsis. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 
1977. 

National Council of Educational Research and Training. Fifth 

All-India Educational Survey. 2 vols. New Delhi: March 1992. 
Nigosian, S.A. The Zoroastrian Faith: Tradition and Modern 

Research. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993. 
O'Barr, William O., and Jean F. O'Barr. Language and Politics. 

The Hague: Mouton, 1976. 
Pakem, B. Regionalism in India: With Special Reference to North-East 

India. Delhi: Har-Anand, 1993. 
Pandian, Jacob. The Making of India and Indian Traditions. 

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1995. 
Pandit, Prabodh Bechardas. India as a Sociolinguistic Area. Pune: 

University of Pune, 1972. 
Pandit, Prabodh Bechardas. Language in a Plural Society. Delhi: 

Motilal Banarsidass; and Shimla: Indian Institute of 

Advanced Study, 1988. 
Pangborn, Cyrus R. Zoroastrianism: A Beleaguered Faith. New 

Delhi: Vikas, 1982. 
Paolucci, Henry. "Italian and English 'Models' for the Modern 

Vernacular Literatures of India." Pages 209-31 in Aldo Sca- 

glione, ed., The Emergence of National Languages. Speculum 

artium, No. 11. Ravenna, Italy: Longo Editore, 1984. 
Parthasarathy, R. "Tamil Literature," World Literature Today, 68, 

No. 2, Spring 1994, 253-59. 



717 



India: A Country Study 

Patel, M.L. Development Dualism of Primitive Tribes: Constraints, 
Restraints, and Fallacies. New Delhi: M.D. Publications, 1994. 

Pattanayak, D.P Language, Education, and Culture. CIIL Occa- 
sional Monograph Series, No. 46. Mysore: Central Institute 
of Indian Languages, 1991. 

Pattanayak, D.P. Multilingualism and Mother-Tongue Education. 
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981. 

Pattanayak, D.P. Papers in Indian Sociolinguistics. Mysore: Central 
Institute of Indian Languages, 1978. 

Pattanayak, D.P., ed. Multilingualism in India. Philadelphia: 
Multilingual Matters, 1990. 

Pawte, Ishtalingapappa Siddharamappa. The Structure of the As h- 
tadhyayi. Hubli: 1934. 

Peacock, Olive. Minorities and National Integration in India. 
Jaipur: Arihand, 1991. 

Perry, John Oliver. "Contemporary Indian Poetry in English," 
World Literature Today, 68, No. 2, Spring 1994, 261-71. !" 

Pescatello, Ann M. "The African Presence in Portuguese India, 
Journal of Asian History [Wiesbaden], 11, No. 1, 1977, 26-48. 

Pollock, Sheldon. "Three Local Cultures in the Sanskrit Cos- 
mopolis (AD 300-1300)," Abstracts of the Annual Meeting of the 
Association for Asian Studies, Inc. Ann Arbor: Association for 
Asian Studies, 1995, 176-77. 

Rai, Amrit. A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi- 
Urdu. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 

Ramaswamy, Sumathi. "Engendering Language: The Poetics of 
Tamil Identity," Comparative Studies in Society and History 
[Cambridge], 25, No. 4, October 1993, 683-725. 

Ramaswamy, Sumathi. "In Praise of Tamil: Ideologies of Lan- 
guage Before the Nation," Abstracts of the Annual Meeting of the 
Association for Asian Studies, Inc. Ann Arbor: Association for 
Asian Studies, 1995, 177-78. 

Ram Reddy, G., and B.A.V. Sharma. Regionalism in India: A 
Study of Telangana. New Delhi: Concept, 1979. 

Rao, G.R.S. Regionalism in India: A Case Study of the Telangana 
Issue. New Delhi: Institute of Constitutional and Parliamen- 
tary Studies, 1975. 

Rao, Narayana. "Style Wars: Sanskrit and Telugu in Medieval 
Andhra," Abstracts of the Annual Meeting of the Association for 



718 



Bibliography 



Asian Studies, Inc. Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 
1995, 177. 

Rastogi, P.N. Ethno-Social Conflict and National Integration. New 

Delhi: Gyan, 1993. 
Ray, Punya Sloka. Language Standardization: Studies in Prescriptive 

Linguistics. The Hague: Mouton, 1963. 
Raza, Moonis, and Aijazuddin Ahmad. An Atlas of Tribal India: 

with Computed Tables of District-Level Data and Its Geographical 

Interpretation. New Delhi: Concept, 1989. 
Rekhi, Upjit Singh. Jharkhand Movement in Bihar. New Delhi: 

Nunes, 1988. 

Rice, Frank A., ed. Study of the Role of Second Languages in Asia, 
Africa, and Latin America. Washington: Center for Applied 
Linguistics of the Modern Language Association of America, 
1962. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Roland, Joan G. Jews in British India: Identity in a Colonial Era. 
Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series, No. 
9. Hanover: University Press of New England for Brandeis 
University Press, 1989. 

Roy, S.B., and Asok K. Ghosh, eds. People of India: Bio-Cultural 
Dimensions: A K.S. Singh Festschrift. New Delhi: Inter-India, 
1993. 

Ruhlen, Merritt. The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of 

the Mother Tongue. New York: Wiley, 1994. 
Sadiq Ali, Shanti. India and Africa Through the Ages. Delhi: 

National Book Trust, 1987. 
Sarang, Vilas. "Confessions of a Marathi Writer," World Literature 

Today, 68, No. 2, Spring 1994, 309-12. 
Sarkar, Ajeya. Regionalism, State, and the Emerging Political Pattern 

in India: A New Approach. Calcutta: Fir ma KLM, 1990. 
Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885-1947. New York: St. Martin's 

Press, 1989. 

Sarma, Satyendra Nath. Assamese Literature. A History of Indian 
Literature, 9: Modern Indo-Aryan Literatures (fasc. 2) . Wies- 
baden: Harrasowitz, 1976. 

Schermerhorn, R.A. Ethnic Plurality in India. Tucson: University 
of Arizona Press, 1978. 



719 



India: A Country Study 



Schimmel, Annemarie. Classical Urdu Literature from the Begin- 
ning to Iqbal A History of Indian Literature, 8: Modern Indo- 
Aryan Literatures (fasc. 3). Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1975. 

Schimmel, Annemarie. Islamic Literatures of India. A History of 
Indian Literature, 7: Modern Indo-Iranian Literatures (fasc. 
1). Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1973. 

Schimmel, Annemarie. Sindhi Literature. A History of Indian 
Literature, 8: Modern Indo-Aryan Literatures (fasc. 2). Wies- 
baden: Harrasowitz, 1974. 

Schwartzberg, Joseph E., ed. A Historical Atlas of South Asia. 2d 
impression. Reference Series of Association for Asian Stud- 
ies, No. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Sebeok, Thomas A., ed. Linguistics in South Asia. Current 
Trends in Linguistics, 5. The Hague: Mouton, 1969. 

Segal, J. B. A History of the Jews of Cochin. London: Vallentine 
Mitchell, 1993. 

Sengupta, Nirmal, ed. Fourth World Dynamics, Jharkhand. Delhi: 
Authors Guild, 1982. 

Shackle, Christopher, and Rupert Snell. Hindi and Urdu since 
1800: A Common Reader. New Delhi: Heritage, 1990. 

Shah, Beena. Tribal Education, Perspectives and Prospects. Cal- 
cutta: Naya Prokash, 1992. 

Shapiro, Michael C, and Harold Schiffmann. Language and 
Society in South Asia. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981. 

Sharma, B.N. Medium of Instruction in India: A Backgrounder 
Based on Official Documents of the Government of India. New 
Delhi: Central Secretariat Library, Department of Culture, 
1985. 

Sharma, K.L., ed. Caste and Class in India. Jaipur: Rawat, 1994. 

Sharma, P. Gopal, and Suresh Kumar, eds. Indian Bilingualism: 
Proceedings of the Symposium Held under the Joint Auspices ofKen- 
driya Hindi Sansthan and Jawaharlal Nehru University, February 
1976. Agra: Kendriya Hindi Sansthan, 1977. 

Sheth, D.L. "The Great Language Debate: Politics of Metropol- 
itan Versus Vernacular India." Pages 187-215 in Upendra 
Baxi and Bhikhu Parekh, eds., Crisis and Change in Contempo- 
rary India. New Delhi: Sage, in association with The Book 
Review Literary Trust, New Delhi, 1995. 

Singh, Bhawani, ed. Regionalism and Politics of Separatism in 
India. Jaipur: Printwell, 1993. 



720 



Bibliography 



Singh, Inderjit. The Great Ascent: The Rural Poor in South Asia. 
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press for the World 
Bank, 1990. 

Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 3: The Scheduled Tribes. 

Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, 1992. 
Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 9: Languages and 

Scripts. Delhi: Anthropological Survey of India, 1992. 
Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 11: An Anthropological 

Atlas. Delhi: Anthropological Survey of India, 1993. 
Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 12: Andaman andNico- 

bar Islands. Madras: Anthropological Survey of India, 1994. 
Singh, Nancy, and Ram Singh, eds. The Sugar in the Milk: The 

Parsis in India. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian 

Knowledge for the Institute for Development Education, 

1986. 

Singh, Navjyoti. "Foundations of Logic in Ancient India: Lin- 
guistics and Mathematics." Pages 79-106 in A. Rahman, ed., 
Science and Technology in Indian Culture. New Delhi: National 
Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies, 
1984. 

Spate, O.H.K., A.T.A. Learmonth, A.M. Learmonth, and B.H. 
Farmer. India and Pakistan: A General and Regional Geography 
with a Chapter on Ceylon. 3d ed., rev. London: Methuen, 1967. 

Sridhar, Kamal K. English in Indian Bilingualism. New Delhi: 
Manohar, 1989. 

Stern, Robert W. Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Sub- 
continent. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Subba, Tanka B. Ethnicity, State, and Development: A Case Study of 
the Gorkhaland Movement inDarjeeling. New Delhi: Har-Anand, 
in association with Vikas, 1992. 

Taylor, David, and Malcolm Yapp, eds. Political Identity in South 
Asia. London: Curzon, 1979. 

Timberg, Thomas A., ed. Jews in India. New Delhi: Vikas, 1986. 

Tulsi Ram. Trading in Language: The Story of English in India. 
Delhi: GDK, 1983. 

Tyagi, P.N. Education for All: A Graphic Presentation. New Delhi: 
National Institute of Educational Planning and Administra- 
tion, August 1991. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. World Factbook, 
1995. Washington: 1995. 



721 



India: A Country Study 

Varma, Siddheshwar. G.A. Grierson's Linguistic Survey of India: A 
Summary. 3 vols. Hoshiarpur: Vishweshvaranand Institute, 
Panjab University, 1972-76. 

Verma, Ramesh Kumar. Regionalism and Sub-regionalism in State 
Politics: Social, Economic, and Political Bases. New Delhi: Deep 
and Deep, 1994. 

Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. 4th ed. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Writer, Rashna. Contemporary Zoroastrians: An Unstructured 
Nation Lanham: University Press of America, 1994. 

Yaquin, Anwarul. Constitutional Protection of Minority Educational 
Institutions in India. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1982. 

Younger, Coralie. Anglo-Indians, Neglected Children of the Raj. 
Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 1987. 

Zide, Normal. "A Bibliographical Introduction to Andamanese 
Linguistics," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 109, No. 4, 
October-December 1989, 639-51. 

Zograf, Georgii Aleksandrovich. Languages of South Asia: A 
Guide. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982. 

Zvabitel, Dusan. Bengali Literature. A History of Indian Litera- 
ture, 9: Modern Indo-Aryan Literatures (fasc. 3). Wies- 
baden: Harrasowitz, 1976. 

Zvelebil, Kamil V. Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Litera- 
ture. Handbuch der Orientalistik. Zweite Abteilung, Indien. 
Bd., Erganzungsband 5. Leiden: Brill, 1992. 

Zvelebil, Kamil V. Tamil Literature. A History of Indian Litera- 
ture, 10: Dravidian Literatures (fasc. 1). Wiesbaden: Harra- 
sowitz, 1974. 

(Various issues of the following publications were also used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Economic and Political Weekly 
[Bombay], 1984-86, 1994; Economist [London], 1988; Far East- 
ern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1984-93; Frontline [Madras], 
1994-95; Panchayati Raj Update [New Delhi], 1994-95; Seminar 
[Delhi], 1992; and Times of India [New Delhi], 1995.) 

Chapter 5 

Agrawal, Bina. "Women, Poverty, and Agricultural Growth in 
India," Journal of Peasant Studies [London], 13, No. 4, July 
1986, 165-220. 



722 



Bibliography 



Ahmad, Imtiaz, ed. Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims 
in India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1978. 

Ahmad, Imtiaz, ed. Family, Kinship, and Marriage among Muslims 
in India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1976. 

Bagwe, Anjali. Of Woman Caste: The Experience of Gender in Rural 
India. New York: Zed, 1995. 

Ballhatchet, Kenneth, and John Harrison, eds. The City in South 
Asia: Pre-Modern and Modern. Atlantic Highland, New Jersey: 
Humanities Press, 1981. 

Basham, A.L. The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History 
and Culture of the Indian Sub-Continent Before the Coming of the 
Muslims. 3d ed., rev. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1967. 

Bedi, Rajeh, and Ramesh Bedi. Sadhus: The Holy Men of India. 
Delhi: Brijbasi, 1961. 

Bennett, Lynn. Women, Poverty, and Productivity in India. EDI 
Seminar Paper, No. 43. Washington: Economic Develop- 
ment Institute, World Bank, 1991. 

Berreman, Gerald D. Caste and Other Inequities: Essays on Inequal- 
ity. Meerut: Folklore Institute, 1979. 

Berreman, Gerald D. Hindus of the Himalayas. Berkeley: Univer- 
sity of California Press, 1963. 

Beteille, Andre. Caste, Class, and Power: Changing Patterns of 
Stratification in a Tanjore Village. Berkeley: University of Cali- 
fornia Press, 1965. 

Boserup, Ester. Women's Role in Economic Development. London: 
Allen and Unwin, 1970. 

Brouwer, Jan. The Makers of the World: Caste, Craft, and Mind of 
South Indian Artisans. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995. 

Bumiller, Elisabeth. May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A 
Journey among the Women of India. New York: Fawcett Colum- 
bine, 1990. 

Caiman, Leslie J. Toward Empowerment: Women and Politics in 
India. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Carstairs, G. Morris. The Twice Born: A Study of a Community of 
High-Caste Hindus. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 
1967. 

Chanchreek, K.L., and Saroj Prasad, eds. Mandal Commission 
Report. Myth and Reality: A National Viewpoint. Delhi: H.K. 
Publishers, 1991. 



723 



India: A Country Study 

Chatterjee, Meera. Indian Women : Their Health and Economic Pro- 
ductivity. World Bank Discussion Papers, No. 109. Washing- 
ton: World Bank. 1990. 

Chitkara, M.G. Bureacracy and Social Change. New Delhi: Ashish, 
1994. 

Chopra. J. K. Women in the Indian Parliament: A Critical Study of 

Their Role. New Delhi: Mittal, 1993. 
Clark. Alice W., ed. Gender and Political Economy: Explorations of 

South Asian Systems. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. 
Cohen, Myron L„ ed. Asia: Case Studies in the Social Sciences: A 

Guide for Teaching. Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 1992. 
Cohn, Bernard S. India: The Social An thropology of a Civilization. 

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971. 
Crane, Robert I., ed. Aspects of Political Mobilization in South Asia. 

Foreign and Comparative Studies/South Asia Series, No. 1. 

Svracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, 

Syracuse University, 1976. 
Crane, Robert I., ed. Nations and Regionalism in South Asian Stud- 
ies: An Exploratory Study. Duke University Monographs and 

Occasional Papers Series, Monograph No. 5. Durham: Duke 

University Press, 1967. 
Das, Veena. "Indian Women: Work, Power, and Status." Pages 

129-45 in B.R. Nanda, ed., Indian Women: From Purdah to 

Modernity. New Delhi: Vikas, 1976. 
Das Gupta, Monica. "Death Clustering, Mothers' Education, 

and the Determinants of Child Mortality in Rural Punjab," 

Population Studies [London], 44, No. 3, November 1990, 489- 

505. 

Das Gupta, Monica. "Selective Discrimination Against Female 
Children in Rural Punjab, India," Population and Development 
Review, 13, No. 1, March 1987, 77-100. 

Das Gupta, Monica. "Women's Life Cycles, Status, and Demo- 
graphic Outcomes." Paper presented at the Conference on 
South Asia, Madison, Wisconsin, 1993. 

Day, Richard H., and Inderjit Singh. Economic Development As an 
Adaptive Process: The Green Revolution in the Indian Punjab. 
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 

de Souza, Alfred, ed. Women in Contemporary India: Traditional 
Images and Changing Roles. New Delhi: Manohar, 1975. 



724 



Bibliography 



Derne, Steve. Cultures in Action: Family, Life, Emotions, and Male 
Dominance in Banaras, India. Albany: State University of New 
York Press, 1995. 

Desai, Sonalde, and Devaki Jain. "Maternal Employment and 
Changes in Family Dynamics: The Social Context of 
Women's Work in Rural South India," Population and Develop- 
ment Review, 20, No. 1, March 1994, 115-36. 

Dickemann, Mildred. "Female Infanticide, Reproductive Strat- 
egies, and Social Stratification: A Preliminary Model." Pages 
321-37 in Napoleon A. Chagnon and William Irons, eds., 
Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropo- 
logical Perspective. North Scituate, Massachusetts: Ducksbury, 
1979. 

Dickemann, Mildred. "Paternal Confidence and Dowry Com- 
petition: A Biocultural Analysis of Purdah." Pages 417-38 in 
Richard A. Alexander and Donald W. Tinkle, eds., Natural 
Selection and Social Behavior: Recent Research and New Theory. 
New York: Chiron, 1981. 

Dubey, Suman. "The Middle Class." Pages 137-64 in Leonard 
A. Gordon and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing, 1992. 
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, in cooperation with The 
Asia Society, 1992. 

Dumont, Louis. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Impli- 
cations. Trans., Mark Sainsbury, et al. Rev. ed. Chicago: Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press, 1980. 

Dyson, Tim, and Mick Moore. "On Kinship Structure, Female 
Autonomy, and Demographic Behavior in India," Population 
and Development Review, 9, No. 1, March 1983, 35-39. 

Elwin, Verrier. The Kingdom of the Young, Abridged from TheMuria 
and Their Ghotul. Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1968. 

Elwin, Verrier. The Muria and Their Ghotul. Bombay: Oxford 
University Press, 1947. Reprint. New Delhi: Oxford Univer- 
sity Press, 1991. 

Embree, Ainslie T. Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in 
Modern India. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society. 
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. 

Engineer, Ashgar Ali, ed. Mandal Commission Controversy. Delhi: 
Ajanta, 1991. 

Freed, Ruth S., and Stanley A. Freed. "Beliefs and Practices 
Resulting in Female Deaths and Fewer Females than Males 



725 



India: A Country Study 

in India," Population and Environment, 10, No. 3, Fall 1989, 
144-61. 

Freed, Ruth S., and Stanley A. Freed. Ghosts: Life and Death in 
North India. Anthropological Papers, No. 72. New York: 
American Museum of Natural History, 1993. 

Freed, Ruth S., and Stanley A. Freed. The Psychomedical Case His- 
tory of a Low-Caste Woman of North India. Anthropological 
Papers, No. 60, Pt. 2. New York: American Museum of Natu- 
ral History, 1985. 

Freed, Stanley A., and Ruth S. Freed. Shanti Nagar: The Effects of 
Urbanization in a Village in North India, 1: Social Organization. 
Anthropological Papers, No. 53, Pt. 1. New York: American 
Museum of Natural History, 1976. 

Fuller, Christopher J. "Misconceiving the Grain Heap; A Cri- 
tique of the Concept of the Indian Jajmani System." Pages 
33-63 in J. Parry and M. Blich, eds., Money and the Morality of 
Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Gallin, Rita S., and Anne Ferguson, eds. The Women and Develop- 
ment Annual Review, 2. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1991. 

Goody, Jack. Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of 
the Domestic Domain. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropol- 
ogy, No. 17. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. 

Gould, Harold A. "The Adaptive Functions of Caste in Contem- 
porary Indian Society," Asian Survey, 13, No. 9, September 
1973, 427-38. 

Gould, Harold A. "Political Economy and Emergence of a Mod- 
ern Class System in India." Pages 155-86 in Yogendra K. 
Malik, ed., Boeings and Bullock-Carts: Studies in Change and 
Continuity in Indian Civilization: Essays in Honour of K. Ishwa- 
ran, 1: India: Culture and Society. Delhi: Chanakya, 1990. 

Gregory, Robert G. South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and 
Social History, 1890-1980. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1993. 

Gross, Susan Hill. Wasted Resources, Diminished Lives: The Impact 
of Boy Preference on the Lives of Girls and Women. St. Louis Park, 
Minnesota: Upper Midwest Women's History Center, 1992. 

Gupta, Giri Raj. Cohesion and Conflict in Modern India. Main Cur- 
rents in Indian Sociology, No. 3. Durham, North Carolina: 
Carolina Academic Press, 1978. 



726 



Bibliography 



Gupta, Giri Raj. Contemporary India: Some Sociological Perspectives. 

Main Currents in Indian Sociology, No. 1. Durham, North 

Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 1976. 
Gupta, Giri Raj. Family and Social Change in Modern India. Main 

Currents in Indian Sociology, No. 2. Durham, North Caro- 
lina: Carolina Academic Press, 1971. 
Hanchett, Suzanne. Coloured Rice: Symbolic Structure in Hindu 

Family Festivals. Delhi: Hindustan, 1988. 
Harris, Marvin. "The Cultural Ecology of India's Sacred Cattle," 

Current Anthropology [Utrecht], 7, No. 1, February 1966, 51- 

66. 

Hiro, Dilip. The Untouchables of India. Rev. ed. MRG Report, No. 
26. London: Minority Rights Working Group on Untouch- 
ables, 1982. 

India. Ministry of Education and Social Welfare. Committee on 
the Status of Women in India. Towards Equality: Report of the 
Committee on the Status of Women in India. New Delhi: 1974. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals: 
Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series- 1, Paper-2 of 
1992, New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Planning. Department of Statistics. Central 
Statistical Organisation. Statistical Abstract 1990, India. New 
Delhi: 1990. ' 

Indian Social Institute. Dalit Organisations, A Directory: Pro- 
gramme for Scheduled Castes. 2d ed. New Delhi: 1994. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Flexibility in Central Indian Kinship and 
Residence." Pages 263-83 in K. Dacid, ed., The New Wind: 
Changing Identities in South Asia. World Anthropology Series. 
The Hague: Mouton, 1977. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Gender Relations: Changing Patterns in 
India." Pages 119-39 in Myron L. Cohen, ed., Asia. Case Stud- 
ies in the Social Sciences: A Guide for Teaching. Armonk, New 
York: Sharpe, 1992. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Hidden Faces: Hindu and Muslim Purdah 
in a Central Indian Village." Ph.D. dissertation. New York: 
Columbia University, 1970. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Indian Women in Processes of Develop- 
ment, u Journal of International Affairs, 30, No. 2, Winter 1976- 
77,211-42. 



727 



India: A Country Study 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Purdah and the Hindu Family in Central 
India." Pages 81-109 in Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, 

eds., Separate Worlds: Studies of Purdah in South Asia. Colum- 
bia, Missouri: South Asia Books; and New Delhi: Chanakya, 
1982. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Purdah in India: Life Behind the Veil," 
National Geographic, 152, No. 2, August 1977, 270-86. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "Separate Spheres: Differential Moderniza- 
tion in Rural Central India." Pages 179-238 in Helen E. Ull- 
rich, ed., Competition and Modernization in South Asia. New 
Delhi: Abhinav, 1975. 

Jacobson, Doranne. "The Veil of Virtue: Purdah and the Mus- 
lim Family in the Bhopal Region of Central India." Pages 
169-215 in Imtiaz Ahmad, ed., Family, Kinship, and Marriage 
among Muslims in India. New Delhi: Manohar, 1976. 

Jacobson, Doranne. Women and Work in South Asia: An Audiovi- 
sual Presentation. Women and Development Issues in Three 
World Areas. St. Louis Park, Minnesota: Upper Midwest 
Women's History Center Collection, 1989. 

Jacobson, Doranne, and Susan S. Wadley. Women in India: Two 
Perspectives. 3d ed. Columbia, Missouri: South Asia Books; 
and New Delhi: Manohar, 1994. 

Jeffery, Patricia, Roger Jeffrey, and Andrew Lyon. Labour Pains 
and Labour Power: Women and Childbearing in India. London: 
Zed, 1989. 

Joshi, Barbara R. "Whose Law, Whose Order: Untouchables, 
Social Violence, and the State in India," Asian Survey, 22, No. 
7, July 1982, 676-87. 

Kakar, Sudhir. The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Child- 
hood and Society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1978. 

Karve, Irawati. Kinship Organization in India. 3d ed. London: 
Asia Publishing House, 1968. 

Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in 
the Hindu Religious Tradition. Berkeley: University of Califor- 
nia Press, 1988. 

Klass, Morton. Caste: The Emergence of the South Asian Social Sys- 
tem. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 
1980. 



728 



Bibliography 



Kolenda, Pauline M. Caste in Contemporary India: Beyond Organic 
Solidarity. Menlo Park, California: Cummings, 1978. 

Kolenda, Pauline M. "Region, Caste, and Family Structure: A 
Comparative Study of the Indian Joint' Family." Pages 339- 
96 in Milton Singer and Bernard S. Cohn, eds., Structure and 
Change in Indian Society. Viking Fund Publications in Anthro- 
pology, No. 47. Chicago: Aldine, 1968. 

Kolenda, Pauline M. "Regional Differences in Indian Family 
Structure." Pages 147-226 in Robert I. Crane, ed., Regions 
and Regionalism in South Asian Studies: An Exploratory Study. 
Duke University Monograph and Occasional Papers Series, 
Monograph No. 5. Durham: Duke University Press, 1967. 

Kshirasagara, Ramacandra. Dalit Movement in India and Its Lead- 
ers, 1857-1956. New Delhi: M.D. Publications, 1994. 

Lapierre, Dominique. The City of Joy. Trans., Kathryn Spink. 
Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1985. 

Lateef, Shahida. Muslim Women in India: Political and Private 
Realities: 1890s-1980s. London: Zed, 1990. 

Lebra, Joyce, J. Paulson, and J. Everett, eds. Women and Work in 
India: Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Promilla, 1984. 

Lewis, Oscar. Village Life in Northern India: Studies in a Delhi Vil- 
lage. Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1958. Reprint. New 
York: Random House, 1965. 

Liddle, Joanna, and Ramajoshi. Daughters of Independence: Gen- 
der, Caste, and Class in India. London: Zed, 1986. 

Luschinsky, Mildred Stroop. "The Impact of Some Recent 
Indian Government Legislation on the Women of an Indian 
Village," Asian Survey, 3, No. 12, December 1963, 573-83. 

Lynch, Owen M. The Politics of Untouchability. New York: Colum- 
bia University Press, 1969. 

Lynch, Owen M. "Potter, Plotters, Prodders in a Bombay Slum: 
Marx and Meaning or Meaning Versus Marx," Urban Anthro- 
pology, 8, No. 1, Spring 1979, 1-27. 

Lynch, Owen M. "Some Aspects of Political Mobilization 
among Adi-Dravidas in Bombay City." Pages 7-33 in Robert 
I. Crane, ed., Aspects of Political Mobilization in South Asia. For- 
eign and Comparative Studies/South Asia Series, No. 1. Syr- 
acuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, 
Syracuse University, 1976. 



729 



India: A Country Study 

Lynch, Owen M. "Stratification, Inequality, Caste System: 
India." Pages 67-80 in Myron L. Cohen, ed., Asia: Case Stud- 
ies in the Social Sciences: A Guide for Teaching. Armonk, New 
York: Sharpe, 1992. 

Lynch, Owen M., ed. Divine Passions: The Social Construction of 
Emotion in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1990. 

Mahar, J. Michael, ed. The Untouchables in Contemporary India. 
Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972. 

Malik, Yogendra K., ed. Boeings and Bullock-Carts: Studies in 
Change and Continuity in Indian Civilization: Essays in Honour 
ofK Ishwaran. 5 vols. Delhi: Chanakya, 1990. 

Maloney, Clarence. Peoples of South Asia. New York: Holt, Rine- 
hart and Winston, 1974. 

Mandelbaum, David G. Society in India: Continuity and Change. 2 
vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. 

Mandelbaum, David G. Women's Seclusion and Men's Honor: Sex 
Roles in North India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Tucson: Univer- 
sity of Arizona Press, 1988. 

Marshall, John F. "What Does Family Planning Mean to an 
Indian Villager?" Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of 
the American Anthropological Association, New York, 1971. 

Martin, M. Kay, and Barbara Voorhies. Female of the Species. New 
York: Columbia University Press, 1975. 

Massey, James. A Concise History of Dalits. Delhi: Indian Society 
for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1994. 

Massey, James, ed. Indigenous People. Dalits: Dalit Issues in Today's 
Theological Debate. ISPCK Contextual Theological Education 
Series, No. 5. Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge, 1994. 

Mayer, Adrian C. Caste and Kinship in Central India. London: 
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960. 

Mencher, Joan P. "The Caste System Upside Down, or the Not- 
So-Mysterious East," Current Anthropology, 15, No. 4, Decem- 
ber 1974, 469-78. 

Mencher, Joan P. Female Cultivators and Agricultural Laborers: 
Who They Are and What They Do. Michigan State University 
Working Papers on Women in International Development, 
No. 192. East Lansing: November 1989. 



730 



Bibliography 



Miller, Barbara D. The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children 
in Rural North India. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. 

Miller, Barbara D. "Son Preference, the Household, and a Pub- 
lic Health Programme in North India." Pages 191-208 in 
Maithreyi Krishnaraj and Karuna Chanana, eds., Gender and 
the Household Domain: Social and Cultural Dimensions. Women 
and the Household in Asia, No. 4. New Delhi: Sage, 1989. 

Mitter, Sara. Dharma's Daughters: Contemporary Indian Women 
and Hindu Culture. New York: Penguin, 1991. 

Mukhopadhyay, Carol Chapnick, and Susan Seymour, eds. 
Women, Education, and Family Structure in India. Boulder, Col- 
orado: Westview Press, 1994. 

Naipaul, V.S. India: A Million Mutinies Now. New York: Penguin, 
1990. 

Nanda, Serena. Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India. Bel- 
mont, California: Wadsworth, 1990. 

Nuckolls, Charles W., ed. Siblings in South Asia: Brothers and Sis- 
ters in Cultural Context. New York: Guilford, 1993. 

Omvedt, Gail. Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar 
and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India. New Delhi: Sage, 
1993. 

Omvedt, Gail. '" Patriarchy': The Analysis of Women's Oppres- 
sion," Insurgent Sociologist, 13, No. 3, 1986, 30-50. 

Omvedt, Gail. Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and 
the Socialist Tradition in India. Armonk, New York: Sharp e, 
1993. 

Ostor, Akos, Lina Fruzetti, and Steve Barnett, eds. Concepts of 
Person: Kinship, Caste, and Marriage in India. Cambridge: Har- 
vard University Press, 1982. 

Papanek, Hanna, and Gail Minault, eds. Separate Worlds: Studies 
of Purdah in South Asia. Columbia, Missouri: South Asia 
Books; and New Delhi: Chanakya, 1982. 

Patterson, Maureen L.P., in collaboration with William J. 
Alspaugh. South Asian Civilizations: A Bibliographic Synthesis. 
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 

Pollock, Sheldon. "Ramayana and Political Imagination in 
India ," Journal of Asian Studies, 52, No. 2, May 1993, 261-97. 

Quale, G. Robina. Families in Context: A World History of Popula- 
tion. New York: Greenwood, 1992. 



731 



In d i a: A Co u n try Stu dy 



Raheja, Gloria Goodwin. "Crying When She's Born, and Crving 
When She Goes Away: Marriage and the Idiom of the Gift in 
Pahansu Song Performance." Pages 19-59 in Lindsev Harlan 
and Paul Courtright, eds., From the Margins of Hindu Mar- 
riage: Essays on Gender Religion, and Culture. New York: Oxford 
University Press, 1995. 

Raheja, Gloria Goodwin. The Poison in the Gift: Ritual. Prestation, 
and the Dominant Caste in a Xorth Indian Village. Chicago: Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press. 1988. 

Raheja, Gloria Goodwin, and Ann Grodzins Gold. Listen to the 
Heron 's Words: Reimagining Gender and Kinship in Xorth India. 
Berkeley; University of California Press, 1994. 

Rao, Bhuvana. "Gender Ideology, Illness Perception, and Deci- 
sion Making: Cultural Issues in Women's Health Care." 
Paper presented at Conference on South Asia, Madison, Wis- 
consin, 1993. 

Revnolds, Holly Baker. "The Auspicious Married Woman." 
Pages 35-60 in Susan S. Wadlev, ed.. The Powers of Tamil 
Women. Foreign and Comparative Studies/ South Asian 
Series, No. 6. Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and 
Public .Affairs, Syracuse University 1980. 

Robb, Peter G. Dalit Movements and the Meanings of Labour in 
India. SOAS Studies on South Asia. Delhi: Oxford University 
Press. 1993. 

Robinson. Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India. Paki- 
stan. Bangladesh. Sri Lanka. Xepal. Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. 

Roland, .Alan. In Search of Self in India and Japan: Toward a Cross- 
Cultural Psychology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 
1988. 

Routledge. Paul. Terrains of Resistance: Xonviolent Social Move- 
ments and the Contestation of Place in India. Westport, Connect- 
icut: Praeger. 1993. 

Roy Manisha. Bengali Women. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1975. 

Sakala, Carol. Women of South Asia: A Guide to Resources. Mill- 
wood. Xew York: Kraus, 1980. 

Saraswathi. T.S., and Baljit Kaur, eds. Human Development and 
Family Studies in India: An Agenda for Research and Policy. Xew 
Delhi: Sage, 1993. 



Bibliography 



Shah, A.M., and LP. Desai. Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of 

Caste in Gujarat. Delhi: Hindustan, 1988. 
Sharma, Miriam. "Caste, Class, and Gender: Production and 

Reproduction in North India," Journal of Peasant Studies 

[London], 12, No. 4, July 1985, 57-88. 
Sharma, Miriam. The Politics of Inequality: Competition and Control 

in an Indian Village. 2d ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii 

Press, 1984. 

Sharma, Miriam. "(Re) creating Tradition: Transformation of 
Marriage Practices in Rural North India." Paper presented at 
the Ninth Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Associa- 
tion of Australia, University of New England, Armidale, 
1991. 

Sharma, Ursula. Women and Property in Northwest India. London: 
Tavistock, 1980. 

Sims, Holly. "Malthusian Nightmare or Richest in Human 
Resources?" Pages 103-36 in Leonard Gordon and Philip 
Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing, 1992. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, in cooperation with The Asia Society, 1992. 

Singer, Milton. When a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropo- 
logical Approach to Indian Civilization. New York: Praeger, 
1972. 

Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 2: The Scheduled Castes. 
Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, 1992. 

Singh, Kumar Suresh, ed. People of India, 3: The Scheduled Tribes. 
Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India, 1992. 

Smart, Ninian, and Shivesh Thakur, eds. Ethical and Political 
Dilemmas of Modern India. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. 

Srinivas, M.N. Social Change in Modern India. Berkeley: Univer- 
sity of California Press, 1966. 

Stern, Robert W. Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Sub- 
continent. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 

Tana, Pradumna, and Rosalba Tana. Traditional Stencil Designs 
from India. Dover Pictorial Archives Series. New York: Dover, 
1986. 

Vatuk, Sylvia. "Authority, Power, and Autonomy in the Life 
Cycle of North Indian Women." Pages 23-44 in Paul Hock- 
ings, ed., Dimensions of Social Life: Essays in Honor of David G. 
Mandelbaum. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987. 



733 



India: A Country Study 



Vatuk, Sylvia, ed. American Studies in the Anthropology of India. 

New Delhi: Manohar, 1978. 
Venkatachalam, R., and Viji Srinivasan. Female Infanticide. New 

Delhi: Har-Anand, 1993. 
Wadley, Susan S. "Family Composition Strategies in Rural 

North India," Social Science and Medicine [Oxford], 37, No. 

11, November 1993, 1367-76. 
Wadley, Susan S. "Female Life Changes in Rural India," Cultural 

Survival Quarterly, 13, No. 2, 1989, 35-39. 
Wadley, Susan S. Struggling with Destiny: Karimpur Lives, 1925- 

1984. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 
Wadley, Susan S., ed. The Powers of Tamil Women. Foreign and 

Comparative Studies/South Asian Series, No. 6. Syracuse: 

Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse 

University, 1980. 
Weiner, Myron. The Child and the State in India: Child Labor and 

Education Policy in Comparative Perspective. Princeton: Prince- 
ton University Press, 1991. 
Wolpert, Stanley. India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1991. 

Yadava, Surendar S., and James G. Chadney. "Female Educa- 
tion, Modernity, and Fertility in India," Journal of Asian and 
Africa Studies [Leiden], 29, Nos. 1-2, January-April 1994, 
110-19. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Economic and Political Weekly 
[Bombay], 1992-93; Hindustan Times [New Delhi], 1987-95; 
India Today [New Delhi], 1986-94; New York Review of Books, 
1990; New York Times, 1993, and Washington Post, 1994.) 

Chapter 6 

Acharya, Shankar. "India's Fiscal Policy." Pages 287-318 in Rob- 
ert E.B. Lucas and Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian Econ- 
omy: Recent Development and Future Prospects. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Adiseshiah, Malcolm S., ed. Seventh Plan Perspectives. New Delhi: 
Lancer International, 1985. 



734 



Bibliography 



Agarwal, Manmohan. "A Comparative Analysis of India's 
Export Performance, 1965-80," Indian Economic Review 
[Delhi], 23, No. 2, July-December 1988, 231-61. 

Aggarwal, J.C. Indian Economy: Crisis and Reforms. New Delhi: 
Shipra, 1991. 

Ahluwalia, Isher Judge. Industrial Growth in India: Stagnation 
since the Mid-Sixties. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985. 

Ahluwalia, Montek S. "India's Economic Performance, Policies, 
and Prospects. Pages 345-60 in Robert E.B. Lucas and 
Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian Economy: Recent Develop- 
ment and Future Prospects. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1988. 

Alagh, Yoginder K. "Growth Performance of the Indian Econ- 
omy, 1950-89: Problems of Employment and Poverty," Devel- 
oping Economies [Tokyo], 30, No. 2, June 1992, 97-116. 

Andersen, Walter K. "India in 1994: Economics to the Fore," 
Asian Survey, 35, No. 2, February 1995, 127-39. 

Asher, Catherine Ella Blanshard. The New Cambridge History of 
India, 1.4: Architecture in Mughal India. Cambridge University 
Press, 1992. 

Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India. 

Automotive Industry of India: Facts and Figures, 1990-91. 24th 

ed. New Delhi: 1991. 
Awasthi, Aruna. History and Development of Railways in India. 

New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1994. 
Awasthi, Dipesh. Regional Patterns of Industrial Growth in India. 

New Delhi: Concept, 1991. 
Bag, A.K. Science and Civilization in India. New Delhi: Navrang, 

1985. 

Balasubramanyam, V.N. The Economy of India. London: Weiden- 
feld and Nicolson, 1984. 

Banerji, Arun Kumar, ed. The Gulf War and the Energy Crisis in 
India. Calcutta: School of International Relations and Strate- 
gic Studies, Jadavpur University, 1993. 

Bansal, N.K., ed. Decentralised Energy: Options and Technology. 
New Delhi: Omega Scientific, 1993. 

Bardhan, Pranab K. The Political Economy of Development in India. 
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Beberoglu, Berch, ed. Class, State, and Development in India. New 
Delhi: Sage, 1992. 



735 



India: A Country Study 



Behari, Madhuri, and B. Behari. Indian Economy since Indepen- 
dence: Chronology of Events. Delhi: D.K. Publications, 1983. 

Bhagwati, Jagdish, ed. India in Transition: Freeing the Economy. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 

Bhargava, P.K. "Transfers from the Center to the States of 
India," Asian Survey, 24, No. 6, June 1984, 665-87. 

Bhatt, V.V. Two Decades of Development: The Indian Experience. 
Bombay: Vora, 1973. 

Bhavsar, Praful D. "The Indian Space Program." Pages 596-601 
in Frank N. Magill, ed., Magill's Survey of Science, 2: Space 
Exploration Series. Pasadena, California: Salem, 1989. 

Blanpied, William A. "The Astronomical Program of Raja Sawai 
Jai Singh II and Its Historical Context," Japanese Studies in the 
History of Science [Tokyo], No. 13, 1974, 87-126. 

Blanpied, William A. "India's Scientific Development," Pacific 
Affairs [Vancouver], 50, No. 1, Spring 1977, 91-99. 

Blanpied, William A. "Pioneer Scientists in Pre-Independence 
India," Physics Today, 39, No. 5, May 1986, 36-44. 

Blanpied, William A. "Science in India," Journal for the History of 
Astronomy [Chalfont St. Giles, United Kingdom], 6, Pt. 2, No. 
16, June 1975, 135-37. 

Blanpied, William A. "Science, Technology, and India's Aspira- 
tions." Pages 129-60 in Marshall M. Bouton and Philip Old- 
enburg, eds., India Briefing, 1988. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, in cooperation with The Asia Society, 1988. 

Bookman, Milica Zarkovic. The Political Economy of Discontinuous 
Development: Regional Disparities and Inter-regional Conflict. New 
York: Praeger, 1991. 

Bose, D.M., S.N. Sen, and B.V. Subbarayappa. A Concise History 
of Science in India. New Delhi: Indian National Science Acad- 
emy, 1971. 

Bradnock, Robert W., ed. India Handbook, 1996. 5th ed. Bath, 
United Kingdom: Trade and Travel, 1995. 

Byrd, William A. "Planning in India: Lessons from Four 
Decades of Development Experience," Journal of Comparative 
Economics, 14, No. 4, December 1990, 713-35. 

Byres, Terence J., ed. The State and Development Planning in 
India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. 

Chadwick, John. "Amlohri Gears Up," Mining Magazine [Lon- 
don], September 1993, 127-34. 



736 



Bibliography 



Chakravarty, Shubhra. Atomic Energy in India. New Delhi: Batra, 
1992. 

Chakravarty, Sukhamoy. Development Planning: The Indian Experi- 
ence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. 

Chandhok, H.L. India Database. The Economy: Annual Time Series 
Data. New Delhi: Living Media India, 1990. 

Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad, ed. History of Science and Technol- 
ogy in Ancient India. 2 vols. Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1986-91. 

Chaturvedi, Prem Sagar. Technology in Vedic Literature. New 
Delhi: Books and Books, 1993. 

Chaudhuri, Pramit. The Indian Economy: Poverty and Development. 
New York, St. Martin's Press, 1979. 

Choy, Jon. "Japan and South Asia: Obstacles and Opportuni- 
ties "JEI Report, No. 48A, December 23, 1994, 1-18. 

Dasgupta, Ajit K. A History of Indian Economic Thought. Rout- 
ledge History of Economic Thought Series. London: Rout- 
ledge, 1993. 

Dedrick, Jason, and Kenneth L. Kraemer. "Information Tech- 
nology in India: Quest for Self-Reliance," Asian Survey, 33, 
No. 5, May 1993, 463-92. 

Devinder Singh. Akali Politics in Punjab, 1964-1985. New Delhi: 
National Book Organisation, 1993. 

Dhar, Pannalal N. "The Indian Economy: Past Performance 
and Current Issues." Pages 3-22 in Robert E.B. Lucas and 
Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian Economy: Recent Develop- 
ment and Future Prospects. Westview Special Studies on South 
and Southeast Asia. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1988. 

Dhingra, Ishwar C. The Indian Economy: Resources, Planning, 
Development, and Problems. Delhi: Sultan Chand, 1983. 

Echeverri-Gent, John. "Between State and Market: The Dynam- 
ics of Formulating Effective Technology Policy." Paper pre- 
sented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political 
Science Association, Washington, 1993. 

Economist Intelligence Unit. Country Profile: India, Nepal, 1992- 

93. London: 1992. 

Economist Intelligence Unit. Country Profile: India, Nepal, 1993- 

94. London: 1993. 

Economist Intelligence Unit. Country Report: India, Nepal [Lon- 
don], No. 2, 1993. 



737 



India: A Country Study 



Economist Intelligence Unit. India to 1990: How Far Will Reform 

Go? London: 1986. 
Frank, Brian. "Satellites and Plowshares: The Potential Demise 

of the Indian Space Program," Harvard International Review, 

15, No. 3, Spring 1993, 54-55, 69-70. 
Fujita, Natsuki. "Liberalization Policies and Productivity in 

India," Developing Economies [Tokyo], 32, No. 4, December 

1994, 509-24. 

Gandhi, P. Jegadish, ed. Economic Development and Policies in 
India. New Delhi: Har-Anand, 1994. 

Ghosh, Arun, K.K. Subrahmanian, Mridul Eapen, and Haseeb 
A. Drabu, eds. Indian Industrialization: Structure and Policy 
Issues. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Goldsmith, Raymond W. The Financial Development of India, 
1860-1977. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. 

Graziano, Milena. India' s Motor Industry: Outlook to 2000. Spe- 
cial Report No. 2013. London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 
1989. 

Guhan, S. The World Bank's Lending in South Asia. Brookings 
Occasional Papers. Washington: Brookings Institution, 1995. 

Gupta, S.P. Indian Science in the Eighties and After. Delhi: Ajanta, 
1990. 

Gupta, Suraj B. Black Income in India. New Delhi: Sage, 1992. 

Gupta, Suraj B. Monetary Planning in India. London: Oxford 
University Press, 1979. 

Hanson, James A., and Samuel S. Lieberman. India: Poverty, 
Employment, and Social Services. A World Bank Country Study. 
Washington: World Bank, 1989. 

Heitzman, James. "Information Systems and Urbanization in 
South Asia," Contemporary South Asia [Abingdon, United 
Kingdom], 1, No. 3, 1992, 363-80. 

Henderson, P.D. India: The Energy Sector. London: Oxford Uni- 
versity Press, 1975. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1992. 60th ed. Ed., S. 
Sarkar. Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1992. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarkar. 
Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 

India. Council of Industrial and Scientific Research. Indian 
National Scientific Documentation Centre. Directory of Scien- 
tific Research Institutions in India. New Delhi: 1969. 



738 



Bibliography 



India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Indian 
National Scientific Documentation Centre. Directory of Scien- 
tific Research Institutions in India. New Delhi: 1989. 

India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Indian 
National Documentation Centre. "INSDOC." (Brochure.) 
New Delhi: n.d. 

India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Indian 
National Documentation Centre. "INSDOC: 40 Years, 1952- 
1992." (Brochure.) New Delhi: n.d. 

India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. National 
Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies. 
Annual Report, 1990-91. Publication No. NISTADS-AR-1991. 
New Delhi: 1991. 

India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. National 
Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies. 
NISTADS. New Delhi: n.d. 

India. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. Publica- 
tions and Information Directorate. Status Report on Science 
and Technology in India. New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Department of Space. Annual Report, 1992-93. Banga- 
lore: 1993. 

India. Department of Space. Indian Space Research Organisa- 
tion. "India in Space." (Pamphlet.) Bangalore: 1992. 

India. Director General of Civil Aviation. Annual Report of the 
Civil Aviation Department, 1988. New Delhi: 1989. 

India. Ministry of Finance. Economic Division. Economic Survey, 
1990-91. New Delhi: 1991. 

India. Ministry of Finance. Economic Division. Economic Survey, 
1992-93. New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Finance. Economic Division. Economic Survey, 
1994-95. New Delhi: 1994. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals: 
Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series-1, Paper-2 of 
1992. New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Directorate 
of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Indian Economy: Prospects 
in the Power Sector. No. 2/33/92 PPL New Delhi: March 1993. 

India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Directorate 
of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Indian Economy: Telecom 



739 



India: A Country Study 



Sector Poised for a Big Leap. No. 2/35/92 PPL New Delhi: April 
1993. 

India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Directorate 

of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Union Budget, 1993-94: 

Imparting a New Dynamism to the Indian Economy. No. 2/39/92 

PPL New Delhi: March 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1992: A Reference Annual New 

Delhi: February 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1993: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: January 1994. 
India. Ministry of Planning. Department of Statistics. Central 

Statistical Organisation. Statistical Abstract 1990, India. New 

Delhi: 1991. ' 

India. Ministry of Railways. Railway Board. Indian Railways Year 
Book, 1991-92. New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Ministry of Science and Technology. Department of Sci- 
ence and Technology. Research and Development in Industry, 
1992-93. New Delhi: 1994. 

India. Planning Commission. Eighth Five Year Plan, 1992-97, 2: 
Sectoral Programmes of Development. New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Reserve Bank. Department of Economic Analysis and 
Policy. India's Balance of Payments, 1948-49 to 1988-89. Bom- 
bay: July 1993. 

Indian Academy of Sciences. Indian Academy of Sciences: The First 

Fifty Years. Bangalore: 1984. 
Indian Academy of Sciences. Year Book, 1993. Bangalore: 1993. 
Indian Institute of Science. Hand Book, 1992-93. Bangalore: 

1992. 

Indian Institute of Science. Centre for Scientific and Industrial 
Consultancy. CSIC — A Profile. Bangalore: January 1991. 

Inoue, Kyoko. Industrial Development Policy of India. I.D.E. Occa- 
sional Papers Series, No. 27. Tokyo: Institute of Developing 
Economies, 1992. 

Ishiguro, Masayasu, and Takamasa Akiyama. Energy Demand in 
Five Major Asian Developing Countries: Structure and Prospects. 
World Bank Discussion Papers, No. 277. Washington: World 
Bank, 1995. 



740 



Bibliography 



Jain, Ashok, and V.P. Kharbanda. Status of Science and Technology 
in India. Country paper presented at the SAARC Workshop 
on Science Policy. New Delhi: National Institute of Science, 
Technology, and Development Studies, 1988. 

Jain, Nem Kumar. Science and Scientists in India (Vedic to Modern). 
Delhi: Indian Book Gallery, 1982. 

Jalan, Bimal, ed. The Indian Economy: Problems and Prospects. New 
Delhi: Viking, 1992. 

Jalan, Bimal. India's Economic Crisis: The Way Ahead. Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1991. 

Jane' s International ABC Aerospace Directory, 1994. 43d ed. Ed., 
Stephen Adams. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Infor- 
mation Group, 1994. 

Jane' s International ABC Aerospace Directory, 1995. 44th ed. Ed., 
Ian Tandy. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information 
Group, 1995. 

Jane's Space Directory, 1994-94. 10th ed. Ed., Andrew Wilson. 
Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 
1994. 

Jane's Urban Transport Systems, 1994-95. 13th ed. Ed., Chris 
Bushell. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information 
Group, 1994. 

Jane's World Railways, 1994-95. 36th ed. Ed., James Abbott. 
Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 
1994. 

Johnson, B.L.C. Development in South Asia. Harmondsworth, 
United Kingdom: Penguin, 1983. 

Joshi, Vijay, and I.M.D. Little. India: Macroeconomics and Political 
Economy, 1964-1991. World Bank Macroeconomic Series. 
Washington: World Bank, 1994. 

Kamath, Shyman J. "Foreign Aid and India: Financing the Levi- 
athan State," Policy Analysis, No. 170, May 6, 1992, 1-26. 

Khatkhate, Deena. "Productivity in Manufacturing as a Deter- 
minant of Growth: The India Case," World Development, 21, 
No. 9, September 1993, 1441-45. 

Kochanek, Stanley A. "The Politics of Regulation: Rajiv's New 
Mantras, "Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 
[London], 23, No. 3, November 1985, 189-211. 

Kohli, Rajan. Structural Change in Indian Industries. New Delhi: 
Capital Foundation Society, 1994. 



741 



India: A Country Study 



Krishna, Raj. "The Economic Development of India," Scientific 
American, 243, No. 3, September 1980, 166-77. 

Krishnaswamy, K.S., ed. Poverty and Income Distribution. Bombay: 
Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Kumar, Dharma, and Meghnad Desai, eds. The Cambridge Eco- 
nomic History of India, 2: c. 175 7-c. 1970. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1983. 

Kuppuram, G., and K. Kumudamani, eds. History of Science and 
Technology in India. 12 vols. Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 1990. 

Lall, Sanjaya. "India," World Development [Oxford], 12, Nos. 5-6, 
May-June 1984, 535-65. 

Lipton, Michael, and John Toye. Does Aid Work in India? A Coun- 
try Study of the Impact of Official Development Assistance. Lon- 
don: Routledge, 1990. 

Lucas, Robert E.B. "India's Industrial Policy," Pages 185-202 in 
Robert E.B. Lucas and Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian 
Economy: Recent Development and Future Prospects. Westview Spe- 
cial Studies on South and Southeast Asia. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, 1988. 

Lucas, Robert E.B., and Gustav F. Papanek, eds. The Indian 
Economy: Recent Development and Future Prospects. Boulder, Col- 
orado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Maddox, John, and K.S. Jayaraman. "Science in India," Nature 
[London], 366, No. 6456, December 16, 1993, 611-26. 

Mandal, S.K. Regional Disparities and Imbalances in India's 
Planned Economic Development. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 
1987. 

Mehta, Fredie A. "Growth, Controls, and the Private Sector." 
Pages 203-13 in Robert E.B. Lucas and Gustav F. Papanek, 
eds., The Indian Economy: Recent Development and Future Pros- 
pects. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Mohan, R., and V. Aggarwal. "Comments and Controls: Plan- 
ning for Indian Industrial Development," Journal of Compara- 
tive Economics, 14, No. 4, December 1990, 681-712. 

Mongia,J.N. India's Economic Development Strategies, 1951-2000 
A.D. New Delhi: Allied, 1986. 

Morehouse, Ward. Science in India: Institution-Building and the 
Organizational System for Research and Development. Bombay: 
Popular Prakashan, 1971. 



742 



Bibliography 



Mukerjee, Swati. "The Impact of Liberalizing Imports: India, a 
Case Study, "Journal of Developing Areas, 28, No. 4, July 1994, 
521-33. 

Mukerji, S.K., and B.V. Subbarayappa, eds. Science in India: A 
Changing Profile. New Delhi: Indian National Science Acad- 
emy, 1984. 

Mydral, Gunnar. Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of 

Nations. 3 vols. New York: Pantheon, 1968. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. The Discovery of India. New York: Day, 1946. 

Reprint. Ed., Robert I. Crane. Garden City, New York: 

Anchor, 1960. 

Papanek, Gustav F. "Poverty in India." Pages 121-41 in Robert 
E.B. Lucas and Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian Economy: 
Recent Development and Future Prospects. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, 1988. 

Patel, I.G. "On Taking India into the Twenty-First Century 
(New Economic Policy in India)," Modern Asian Studies [Lon- 
don], 21, Pt. 2, April 1987, 209-31. 

Percy, Charles H. "South Asia's Take-Off," Foreign Affairs, 72, 
No. 5, Winter 1992-93, 166-74. 

Petroleum Economist. "Energy Map of India." (Map.) London: 
October 1993. 

Rahman, A. "Indian Muslims: A Historical Perspective." Pages 
5-18 in Ratna Sahai, ed., Muslims in India. New Delhi: Minis- 
try of External Affairs, 1989. 

Rahman, Abdur, ed. Science and Technology in Indian Culture: A 
Historical Perspective. New Delhi: National Institute of Sci- 
ence, Technology and Development Studies, 1984. 

Raj, K.N. New Economic Policy. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1986. 

Ramaseshan, Sivaraj. "The Problems of Growing Science in 
India and Other Developing Countries: The Role of Aca- 
demics," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 610, Octo- 
ber 31, 1990, 141-49. 

Ramaseshan, Sivaraj, and C. Ramachandra Rao, comps. C.V. 
Rama: A Pictorial Biography. Bangalore: Indian Academy of 
Sciences, 1988. 

Ranganathan, V. "Electricity Privatization: The Case of India," 
Energy Policy, 21, No. 8, August 1993, 875-80. 



743 



India: A Country Study 



Rangarajan, C. "India's Foreign Borrowing." Pages 253-70 in 
Robert E.B. Lucas and Gustav F. Papanek, eds., The Indian 
Economy: Recent Development and Future Prospects. Boulder, Col- 
orado: Westview Press, 1988. 

Rashid, Aneesa Ismail. "Trade, Growth, and Liberalization: The 
Indian Experience, 1977-1989," Journal of Developing Areas, 
29, No. 3, April 1995, 355-70. 

Ray, Animesh. Maritime India: Ports and Shipping. Calcutta: 
Pearl, 1993. 

Ray, Raj at Kanta. Entrepreneurs hip and Industry in India, 1800- 
1947. Oxford in India Readings: Themes in Indian History. 
New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Ray, S.K. Indian Economy. New Delhi: Prentice-Hall, 1987. 

Robinson, E.A.G., and Michael Kidron. Economic Development in 
South Asia: Proceedings of a Conference Held by the International 
Economic Association at Kandy, Ceylon. London: Macmilan, 
1970. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Rosen, George. Contrasting Styles of Industrial Reform: China and 
India in the 1980s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
1992. 

Rothermund, Dietmar. An Economic History of India from Pre-colo- 
nial Times to 1986. London: Croom Helm, 1988. 

Sangwan, Satpal. "Science Education in India under Colonial 
Constraints, 1792-1857," Oxford Review of Education 
[Oxford], 16, No. 1, 1990, 81-95. 

Sato, Hiroshi. "The Political Economy of Central Budgetary 
Transfers to States in India, 1972-82," Developing Economies 
[Tokyo], 30, No. 4, December 1992, 347-76. 

Schiff, Maurice. "The Impact of Two-Tier Producer and Con- 
sumer Food Pricing in India," World Bank Economic Review, 8, 
No. 1, January 1994, 103-25. 

Sen, Amartya Kumar. "Indian Development: Lessons and Non- 
Lessons," Daedalus, 18, No. 4, Fall 1989, 369-92. 

Shantijagannathan. EC and India in the 1990s: Towards Corporate 
Synergy. New Delhi: Indian Council for Research on Interna- 
tional Economic Relations, 1993. 



744 



Bibliography 



Singh, Navjyoti. "Foundations of Logic in Ancient India: Lin- 
guistics and Mathematics." Pages 79-106 in A. Rahman, ed., 
Science and Technology in Indian Culture. New Delhi: National 
Institute of Science, Technology, and Development Studies, 
1984. 

Singh, Prahlad. Jantar-Mantars of India (Stone Observatories). 
Jaipur: Holiday Publications, 1986. 

Singh, Virendra. "Tata Institute of Fundamental Research." 
(Unpublished text of lecture.) Bombay: n.d. 

Sinha, Ajit Kumar, ed. New Economic Policy of India: Restructuring 
and Liberalizing the Economy for the 21st Century. New Delhi: 
Deep and Deep, 1994. 

Sinha, R.K., ed. Economic Development since Independence. New 
Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1988. 

Sinha, R.K., ed. The Great Ascent: The Rural Poor in South Asia. 
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. 

Sinha, R.K., ed. Planning and Development in India. New Delhi: 
Har-Anand, 1994. 

Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies and Industries. Direc- 
tory of Indian Aerospace, 1993. Bangalore: Interline, 1993. 

Sondhi, Sunil. Science, Technology, and India' s Foreign Policy. 
Delhi: Anamika Prakashan, 1994. 

South Asian Handbook: India and the Indian Sub-Continent, 1994. 
2d ed. Ed., Robert W. Bradnock. Bath, United Kingdom: 
Trade and Travel, 1993. 

Sridharan, E. "Economic Liberalism and India's Political Econ- 
omy: Towards a Paradigm Synthesis," fournal of Commonwealth 
and Comparative Politics [London], 31, No. 3, November 
1993, 1-31. 

Sridharan, E. "Leadership Time Horizons in India: The Impact 

on Economic Restructuring," Asian Survey, 31, No. 12, 

December 1991, 1200-13. 
S tree ten, Paul, and Michael Lip ton, eds. The Crisis of Indian 

Planning: Economic Planning in the 1960s. London: Oxford 

University Press, 1968. 
Subbarayappa, B.V. In Pursuit of Excellence: A History of the Indian 

Institute of Science. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1992. 
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Annual Report, 1991- 

92. Ed., S.K. Mitra. Bombay: 1992. 



745 



India: A Country Study 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1988-89. 16th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1989. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1992-93. 20th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1992. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1994-95. 21st ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1994. 

Thomas, Richard. India's Emergence as an Industrial Power: Mid- 
dle Eastern Contracts. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1982. 

Tytler, Jagdish. "India's Transportation Opportunities," Leaders, 
17, No. 4, December 1994, 217. 

United Nations. Development Programme. Human Development 
Report, 1993. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 

United Nations. Industrial Development Organization. New 
Dimensions of Industrial Growth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of 
Intelligence. Handbook of International Economic Statistics. 
CPAS 94-1001. Washington: September 1994. 

United States. National Science Foundation. Human Resources 
for Science and Technology: The Asian Region. Surveys of Science 
Resources Series, NSF 93-303. Washington: 1993. 

United States. Trade and Development Agency. "The Trade 
and Development Agency in India." (Brochure.) Washing- 
ton: September 1993. 

Vaidyanathan, A. "The Indian Economy since Independence, 
1947-1970." Pages 947-95 in Dharma Kumar and Meghnad 
Desai, eds., Cambridge Economic History of India, 2: c.1757- 
c.1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 

Verma, R.K., and Anupama Verma. Evaluation and Impact of 
Jawahar Rozgar Yojana. New Delhi: Mohit, 1994. 

Wallich, Christine, RajaJ. Chelliah, and Narain Sinha, eds. State 
Finances in India. 3 vols. World Bank Staff Working Paper, 
No. 523. Washington: World Bank, 1982. 

West, Jim, ed. International Petroleum Encyclopedia. Tulsa, Okla- 
homa: PennWell, 1992. 

World Bank. Economic Developments in India: Achievements and 
Challenges. World Bank Country Study. Washington: 1995 



746 



Bibliography 



World Bank. India: Recent Economic Developments and Prospects. A 
World Bank Country Study. Washington: 1995. 

World Bank. Country Operations Industry and Finance Divi- 
sion. India: Country Economic Memorandum: Recent Develop- 
ments: Achievements and Challenges. Report No. 14402-IN. 
Washington: May 30, 1995. 

World Bank. Operations Evaluation Department. World Bank 
Support for Industrialization in Korea, India, and Indonesia. 
World Bank Operations Evaluation Study. Washington: 1992. 

The World of Learning, 1995. 45th ed. London: Europa, 1994. 

World Radio TV Handbook, 1995. 49th ed. Ed., Andrew G. Sen- 
nitt. Amsterdam: Billboard, 1995. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Asian Wall Street Journal 
[Hong Kong], 1992-93; Asiaweek [Hong Kong], 1993-94; 
Defense Nexus, 1993; Economic and Political Weekly [Bombay], 
1984-92; Far Eastern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1993-95; 
Financial Times [London], 1994; Foreign Broadcast Informa- 
tion Service, Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, 1993-95; 
International Railway Journal and Rapid Transit Review [Fal- 
mouth], 1993-94; New York Times, 1994; Sainik Samachar [New 
Delhi], 1994; and Washington Post, 1994-95.) 

Chapter 7 

Acharya, K.C.S. Food Security System of India: Evolution of the 
Buffer Stocking Policy and Its Evaluation. New Delhi: Concept, 
1983. 

Alderman, Harold, George Mergos, and Roger Slade. Coopera- 
tives and the Commercialization of Milk Production in India: A Lit- 
urature Review. Washington: International Food Policy 
Research Institute, 1987. 

Ansari, Nasim, ed. Agrarian Structure, Land Reform, and Agricul- 
tural Growth in India. Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1991. 

Attwood, D.W., and B.S. Baviskar, eds. Who Shares? Co-operatives 
and Rural Development. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1988. 

Bagchi, Kathkali S. Drought-Prone India: Problems and Perspectives. 
2 vols. New Delhi: Agricole, 1991. 



747 



India: A Country Study 



Bahuguna, Vinod Kumar, Vinay Luthra, and Brij McMan Singh 
Rathor. "Collective Forest Management in India," Ambio 
[Stockholm], 23, No. 4-5, July 1994, 269-73. 

Baral, Lok Raj. "India-Nepal Relations: Continuity and 
Change," Asian Survey, 32, No. 9, September 1992, 815-29. 

Bardhan, Pranab K. "Demographic Effects on Agricultural Pro- 
letarianization: The Evidence from India." Pages 175-83 in 
Ronald D. Lee, W. Brian Arthur, Allen C. Kelley, Gerry Rod- 
gers, and T.N. Srinivasan, eds., Population, Food, and Rural 
Development. International Studies in Demography. Oxford: 
Clarendon Press, 1988. 

Bardhan, Pranab K. Land, Labor, and Rural Poverty: Essays in 
Development Economics. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1984. 

Baxi, Upendra, and Bhikhu Parekh, eds. Crisis and Change in 
Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 

Bhalla, A.S., and A.K.N. Reddy, eds. The Technological Transfor- 
mation of Rural India. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. 

Bhalla, G.S, and YK. Alagh. Performance of Indian Agriculture: A 
Distridwide Study. New Delhi: Sterling, 1979. 

Bhalla, G.S., and D.S. Tyagi. Patterns in Indian Agricultural Devel- 
opment: A District Level Study. New York: Institute for Studies 
in Industrial Development, 1989. 

Bhatia, B.M. Indian Agriculture: A Policy Perspective. New Delhi: 
Sage, 1988. 

Bhatta, Sitesh. Agricultural Price Policy and Production in India. 
Delhi: Konark, 1991. 

Bhuleshkar, Ashok Vasant, ed. Indian Economy in the World Set- 
ting. Bombay: Himalaya, 1988. 

Blyn, George. Agricultural Trends in India, 1891-1947: Output, 
Availability, and Productivity. Philadelphia: University of Penn- 
sylvania Press, 1966. 

Brass, Paul, ed. "New Farmers' Movements in India ," Journal of 
Peasant Studies [London], 21, Nos. 3-4, April-July 1994, 1- 
286. 

Dahiya, L.N. Dynamics of Economic Life in Rural India. Delhi: 
Gian, 1991. 

Dantwala, M.L., et al. Indian Agricultural Development since Inde- 
pendence: A Collection of Essays. New Delhi: Oxford University 
Press and IBH, 1986. 



748 



Bibliography 



dejanury, Alain, and K. Subbarao. Agricultural Price Policy and 
Income Distribution in India. New Delhi: Oxford University 
Press, 1986. 

Desai, Vasant. A Study of Rural Economics: A Systems Approach. 

Bombay: Himalaya, 1983. 
Dhawan, B.D. The Big Dams: Claims and Counter Claims. New 

Delhi: Commonwealth, 1981. 
Dhawan, B.D. "Water Resource Management in India," Indian 

Journal of Agricultural Economics [Bombay], 44, No. 3, July- 
September 1989, 233-41. 
Diwakar, D.M. Agriculture and Industry: Dynamics of Imbalances in 

India. New Delhi: Manak, 1991. 
Doornbos, Martin, Frank Van Borsten, Manoshi Mitra, and Piet 

Terhal. Dairy Aid and Development: India's Operation Flood. New 

Delhi: Sage, 1990. 
Ghosh, Ambica. Emerging Capitalism in Indian Agriculture, 1: The 

Historical Roots of Its Uneven Development. New Delhi: People's, 

1988. 

Gillespie, Stuart, and Geraldine McNeill. Food, Health, and Sur- 
vival in India and Developing Countries. New Delhi: Oxford 
University Press, 1992. 

Goyal, S.K. Agricultural Prices and Its Impact on the Indian Econ- 
omy: A Case Study ofHaryana. New Delhi: Classical, 1992. 

Hazell, Peter B.R., and C. Ramasamy. The Green Revolution 
Reconsidered: The Impact of High-Yielding Rice Varieties in South 
India. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. 

Hindustan Year Book and Who's Who, 1994. 62d ed. Ed., S. Sarkar. 
Calcutta: M.C. Sarkar, 1994. 

India. Ministry of Agriculture. Department of Agricultural Research 
and Education Report, 1988-89. New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Ministry of Agriculture. Department of Agriculture and 
Co-operation. Annual Report, 1991-92. New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Ministry of Agriculture. Department of Agriculture and 
Co-operation. Annual Report, 1994-95. New Delhi: 1994. 

India. Ministry of Agriculture. Department of Agriculture and 
Co-operation. Directorate of Economics and Statistics. Agri- 
cultural Situation in India. New Delhi: 1991. 

India. Ministry of Agriculture. Fisheries Division. Hand Book of 
Fisheries Statistics, 1991. New Delhi: 1992. 



749 



India: A Country Study 



India. Ministry of Finance. Economic Division. Economic Survey, 

1991-92, 2: Sectoral Developments. New Delhi: 1992. 
India. Ministry of Finance. Economic Division. Economic Survey, 

1993-94. New Delhi: 1994. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1992: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: February 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1993: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: January 1994. 
India. Ministry of Planning. Department of Statistics. Central 

Statistical Organisation. Statistical Abstract 1990, India. New 

Delhi: 1991. ' 

India. Planning Commission. Eighth Five Year Plan, 1992-97, 1: 

Objectives, Perspectives, Macro Dimensions, Policy Framework, and 

Resources. New Delhi: 1992. 
India. Planning Commission. Eighth Five Year Plan, 1992-97, 2: 

Sectoral Programmes of Development. New Delhi: 1992. 
India. Planning Commission. Sixth Five Year Plan, 1980-85. New 

Delhi: 1992. 

Jakhade, M., and H.B. Shivamaggi. "Inter-District Comparisons 
of Agricultural Development and Spread of Banking Facili- 
ties in Rural Areas," Reserve Bank of India Bulletin [Bombay], 
23, No. 10, October 1969, 1559-1615. 

Jannuzi, F. Tomasson. India' s Persistent Dilemma: The Political 
Economy of Agrarian Reform. Boulder: Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1994. 

Jha, P.R. Agriculture and Economic Development. New Delhi: Ash- 
ish, 1988. 

Kapila, Uma, ed. Indian Economy since Independence: Different 
Aspects of Agricultural Development. Delhi: Academic Founda- 
tion, 1990. 

Kashyap, Subhash C, ed. National Policy Studies. New Delhi: 
Tata McGraw-Hill for the Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1990. 

Lele, Uma, and A. A. Goldsmith. "The Development of 
National Agricultural Research Capacity: India's Experience 
with the Rockefeller Foundation and Its Significance for 
Africa," Economic Development and Cultural Change, 37, No. 2, 
January 1989, 305-43. 



750 



Bibliography 



Maheshwari, Shriram. Rural Development in India: A Public Policy 
Approach. 2d ed. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 

Mandal, Gobinda. Technology, Growth, and Welfare in Indian Agri- 
culture. New Delhi: Agricole, 1989. 

Mellor, John W., and Gunvant M. Desai. Agricultural Change and 
Rural Poverty: Variations on a Theme by Dharm Narain. Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1986. • 

Narain, Dharm. Impact of Price Movements on Areas under Selected 
Crops in India, 1900-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, 1957. 

Narain, Dharm. "Growth and Imbalances in Indian Agricul- 
ture," Journal of the Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics [New 
Delhi], 24, No. l,June 1972, 9-20. 

Narain, Dharm. Studies on Indian Agriculture. Eds., K.N. Raj, 
Amratya Sen, and C.H. Hanumantha Rao. Delhi: Oxford 
University Press, 1988. 

Narayana, N.S.S., K.S. Parikh, and T.N. Srinivasan. Agriculture, 
Growth, and Redistribution of Income: Policy Analysis with a Gene- 
ral Equilibirum Model of India. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 
1991. 

"NGO-Government Interaction in India." Pages 91-188 in John 
Farrington and David J. Lewis, eds., Non-Governmental Organi- 
zations and the State in Asia: Rethinking Roles in Sustainable Agri- 
cultural Development. Non-Governmental Organizations 
Series. London: Routledge, 1993. 

Raghuram, Parvati. "Invisible Female Agricultural Labour in 
India." Pages 109-19 in Janet Henshall Momsen and Vivian 
Kinnaird, eds., Different Places, Different Voices: Gender and 
Development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. International 
Studies of Women and Place. London: Routledge, 1993. 

Ravindranath, N.H., and D.O. Hall. "Indian Forest Conserva- 
tion and Tropical Deforestation," Ambio [Stockholm], 23, 
No. 8, December 1994, 521-23. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Sehgal, J.L., D.K. Mondal, C. Mondal, and S. Vadivelo. Agro-Eco- 
logical Regions of India. Technical Bulletin, NBSS Publication, 
No. 24. Nagpur: National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land 



751 



India: A Country Study 

Use Planning, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 
1990. 

Sharma, Rita, and Thomas T. Poleman. The New Economics of 
India's Green Revolution: Income and Employment Diffusion in 
Uttar Pradesh. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. 

Sheth, Pravin N. "The Sardar Sarovar Project: Ecopolitics of 
Development," Pages # 400-31 in Upendra Baxi and Bhikhu 
Parekh, eds., Crisis and Change in Contemporary India. New 
Delhi: Sage, 1995. 

Shome, K.B., and S.P. Raychaudhri. "Rating Soils of India," Pro- 
ceedings of the National Institute of Sciences of India [New Delhi] , 
26, Part A, Supplement 1, December 1960, 260-89. 

Srinivasan, T.N., ed. Agriculture and Trade in China and India: 
Policy and Performance since 1950. San Francisco: Interna- 
tional Center for Economic Growth, 1994. 

Subrahmanya, Susheela, and I. Satya Sundaram, eds. Growth of 
Agriculture and Rural Development in India. New Delhi: Deep 
and Deep, 1987. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1988-89. 16th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1989. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1992-93. 20th ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1992. 

Tata Services. Department of Economics and Statistics. Statisti- 
cal Outline of India, 1994-95. 21st ed. Ed., B.S. Gupta. Bom- 
bay: 1994. 

Thornton, Thomas P. "India Adrift: The Search for Moorings 
in a New World Order," Asian Survey, 32, No. 12, December 
1992, 1063-77. 

United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Informa- 
tion and Policy Analysis. Statistical Division. Statistical Year- 
book, 1992. 39th ed. New York: 1994. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of 
Intelligence. Handbook of International Economic Statistics. 
CPAS 94-1001. Washington: September 1994. 

United States. Department of Agriculture. Foreign Agricultural 
Service. Foreign Agriculture, 1990-91. Washington: August 
1991. 



752 



Bibliography 



United States. Department of Agriculture. Foreign Agricultural 
Service. Foreign Agriculture, 1992. Washington: December 
1992. 

United States. Embassy in New Delhi. Annual Commodity Report, 
Oilseeds and Products, 1992. New Delhi: 1992. 

United States. Embassy in New Delhi. India: Agricultural Situa- 
tion, Annual Report, 1992. CERP Series, No. IN-2023. Wash- 
ington: United States Department of Agriculture, 1992. 

Varma, Rameswari. 'Assessing Rural Development Programmes 
in India from a Gender Perspective." Pages 120-30 in Janet 
Henshall Momsen and Vivian Kinnaird, eds., Different Places, 
Different Voices: Gender and Development in Africa, Asia, and 
Latin America. International Studies of Women and Place. 
London: Routledge, 1993. 

Washbrook, David A. "The Commercialization of Agriculture 
in Colonial India: Production, Subsistence, and Reproduc- 
tion in the 'Dry South', c. 1870-1930," Modern Asian Studies 
[London], 28, Pt. 1, February 1994, 129-64. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Economic and Political Weekly 
[Bombay], 1987-95; New York Times, 1993; and Times of India 
[New Delhi], 1993.) 

Chapter 8 

Agrawal, Suren. Government and Politics in India: A Bibliographi- 
cal Study of Contemporary Scenario Chronicling Rajiv Gandhi Era. 
New Delhi: Concept, 1993. 

Ahuja, Gurdas M. BJP and the Indian Politics: Politics and Pro- 
grammes of the Bharatiya Janata Party. New Delhi: Ram, 1994. 

Akbar, M.J. Kashmir: Behind the Vale. New Delhi: Viking, 1991. 

Akbar, M.J. The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation's Unity. Lon- 
don: Penguin, 1985. 

Alexander, K.C. "Caste Mobilization and Class Consciousness: 
The Emergence of Agrarian Movements in Kerala and Tamil 
Nadu." Pages 362-413 in Francine R. Frankel and M.S.A. 
Rao, eds., Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of 
a Social Order, 1. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. 



753 



India: A Country Study 



Amin, Shahid. "Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur District, East- 
ern UP, 1921-2." Pages 1-61 in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern 
Studies, 3. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Anand, C.L., and H.N. Seth. Constitutional Law and History of 
Government of India, Government of India Act, 1935, and the 
Constitution of India. 7th ed. Allahabad: University Book 
Agency, 1992. 

Andersen, Walter K. "India in 1994: Economics to the Fore," 
Asian Survey, 35, No. 2, February 1995, 127-39. 

Andersen, Walter K. "India's 1991 Elections: The Uncertain 
Verdict," Asian Survey, 31, No. 10, October 1991, 976-89. 

Andersen, Walter K., and Shridhar D. Damle. The Brotherhood in 
Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revival- 
ism. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1987. 

Austin, Dennis. Democracy and Violence in India and Sri Lanka. 
Chatham House Papers. London: Royal Institute of Interna- 
tional Affairs, 1995. 

Austin, Granville. The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966. 

Baar, Carl. "Social Action Litigation in India: The Operation 
and Limitations of the World's Most Active Judiciary," Policy 
Studies Journal, 19, No. 1, September 1990, 140-50. 

Bajpai, K. Shankar. "India in 1991: New Beginnings," Asian Sur- 
vey, 32, No. 2, February 1992, 207-16. 

Balaram, Nhalileveettil Edapalath. A Short History of the Commu- 
nist Party of India. Trivandrum: Prabhath, 1967. 

Barnett, Marguerite Ross. The Politics of Cultural Natonalism in 
South India. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. 

Baruah, Sanjib. "The State and Separatist Militancy in Assam: 
Winning a Battle or Losing the War?" Asian Survey, 34, No. 
10, October 1994, 863-77. 

Basu, Amrita. Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Modes of Women's 
Activism in India. Berkeley: University of California Press, 
1992. 

Baxi, Upendra. Courage, Craft, and Contentions: The Indian 
Supreme Court in the Eighties. Bombay: Tripathi, 1985. 

Baxi, Upendra. The Crisis of the Indian Legal System. New Delhi: 
Vikas, 1982. 

Baxi, Upendra, and Bhikhu Parekh, eds. Crisis and Change in 
Contemporary India. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 



754 



Bibliography 



Baxter, Craig, Yogendra K. Malik, Charles H. Kennedy, and 

Robert C. Oberst. Government and Politics in South Asia. 3d ed. 

Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993. 
Bhargava, P.K. "Transfers from the Center to the States of 

India," Asian Survey, 24, No. 6, June 1984, 665-87. 
Blaustein, Albert P., ed. "India Supplement," Constitutions of the 

Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana, 

April 1989. 

Blaustein, Albert P., and Gisbert Flanz, eds. "India," Constitu- 
tions of the Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs Ferry, New York: 
Oceana, October 1990. 

Brass, Paul R. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison. 
New Delhi: Sage, 1991. 

Brass, Paul R. Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress 
Party in Uttar Pradesh. Berkeley: University of California 
Press, 1966. 

Brass, Paul R. The New Cambridge History of India, IV. 1: The Poli- 
tics of India since Independence. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1994. 

Brass, Paul R. "The Punjab Crisis and the Unity of India." Pages 
169-213 in Atul Kohli, ed., India's Democracy: An Analysis of 
Changing State-Society Relations. Princeton: Princeton Univer- 
sity Press, 1988. 

Brass, Paul R. "The Rise of the BJP and the Future of Party Pol- 
itics in Uttar Pradesh." Pages 255-92 in Harold A. Gould and 
Sumit Ganguly, eds., India Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority 
Governments in the Ninth and Tenth General Elections. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, 1993. 

Butler, David, Ashok Lahiri, and Prannoy Roy. India Decides: 
Elections 1952-1991. 2d ed. New Delhi: Living Media India, 
1991. 

Caiman, Leslie J. Toward Empowerment: Women and Politics in 
India. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Chatterjee, Partha. "Gandhi and the Critique of Civil Society." 
Pages 153-95 in Ranajit Guha, and Gayatri Chatravorty, eds., 
Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society, 3. 
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1984. 

Chaudhuri, Joyotpaul. "Federalism and the Siamese Twins: 
Diversity and Entropy in India's Domestic and Foreign Pol- 



755 



India: A Country Study 



icy," International Journal [Toronto], 48, No. 3, Summer 1993, 
448-69. 

Chopra, J.K. Women in the Indian Parliament: A Critical Study of 

Their Role. New Delhi: Mittal, 1993. 
Clive, John. Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian. New York: 

Knopf, 1973. 

Clive, John, and Thomas Pinney, eds. Thomas Babington 
Macaulay: Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chicago 
Press, 1972. 

Cohn, Bernard S. "History and Anthropology: The State of 

Play," Comparative Studies in Society and History [Cambridge], 

22, No. 2, April 1980, 198-221. 
Crossette, Barbara. India: Facing the Twenty-First Century. The 

Essential Asia Series. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 

1993. 

Das Gupta, Joyotirindra. "India 1979: The Prize Chair and the 
People's Share — Electoral Diversion and Economic Rehears- 
al," Asian Survey, 20, No. 2, February 1980, 176-87. 

Dhar, Pannanlal N. Preventive Detention under Indian Constitution. 
New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1986. 

Dhavan, Rajeev. Litigation Explosion in India. Bombay: Tripathi, 
1986. 

Dirks, Nicholas S. The Hollow Crown. Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1987. 

Dua, Bhagwan D. "Federalism or Patrimonialism: The Making 
and Unmaking of Chief Ministers in India," Asian Survey, 25, 
No. 8, August 1985, 793-804. 

Echeverri-Gent, John. The State and The Poor: Public Policy and 
Political Development in India and the United States. Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 1993. 

Eisenstadt, S.N. "Dissent, Heterodoxy, and Civilization Dynam- 
ics: Some Analytical and Comparative Implications." Pages 
1-10 in S.N. Eisenstadt, Reuven Kahane, and David Shul- 
man, eds., Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy, and Dissent in India. Religion 
and Society, No. 23. New York: Mouton, 1984. 

Engineer, Asghar Ali. Communalism and Communal Violence in 
India: An Analytical Approach to Hindu Muslim Conflict. Delhi: 
Ajanta, 1989. 



756 



Bibliography 



Engineer, Ashghar Ali, and Pradeep Nayak, eds. Communalisa- 
tion of Politics and 10th Lok Sabha Elections. Delhi: Ajanta, 
1993. 

Estava, Gustavo, and Madhu Suri Prakash. "Grassroots Resis- 
tance to Sustainable Development: Lessons from the Banks 
of the Narmada," Ecologist, 22, No. 2, March-April 1992, 45- 
51. 

Farmer, Victoria L. "Politics and Airways: The Evolution of 
Television in India." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting 
of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, March 23-27, 
1994. 

Fickett, Lewis P., Jr. "The Rise and Decline of the Janata Dal," 
Asian Survey, 33, No. 12, December 1993, 1151-62. 

Frankel, Francine R. "Conclusion: Decline of a Social Order." 
Pages 382-417 in Francine R. Frankel and M.S.A. Rao, eds., 
Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social 
Order, 2. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Frankel, Francine R. "India's Democracy in Transition," World 
Policy Journal, 7, No. 4, Summer 1990, 521-55. 

Frankel, Francine R. India' s Political Economy, 1947-1977. 
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. 

Frankel, Francine R., and M.S.A. Rao, eds. Dominance and State 
Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order. 2 vols. Delhi: 
Oxford University Press, 1989-90. 

Gadgil, Madhav, and Ramachandra Guha. This Fissured Land: 
An Ecological History of India. Berkeley: University of Califor- 
nia Press, 1993. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "Avoiding War in Kashmir," Foreign Affairs, 69, 
No. 5, Winter 1990-1991, 57-73. 

Ganguly, Sumit, and Kanti Bajpai. "India and the Crisis in Kash- 
mir," Asian Survey, 34, No. 5, May 1994, 401-16. 

George, Sudhir Jacob. "Bodo Movement in Assam: Unrest to 
Accord," Asian Survey, 34, No. 10, October 1994, 878-92. 

Ghosh, Partha S. "Foreign Policy and Electoral Politics in India: 
Inconsequential Connection," Asian Survey, 34, No. 9, Sep- 
tember 1994, 807-17. 

Goswami, B. The Indian Parliamentary Scene. Jaipur: Pointer, 
1994. 

Gould, Harold A. "Modern Politics in an Indian District: 'Natu- 
ral Selection' and 'Selective Co-optation'." Pages 217-48 in 



757 



India: A Country Study 



Richard Sisson and Ramashray Roy, eds., Diversity and Domi- 
nance in Indian Politics. New Delhi: Sage, 1990. 

Gould, Harold A., and Sumit Ganguly, eds. India Votes: Alliance 
Politics and Minority Governments in the Ninth and Tenth General 
Elections. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Goyel, Purushottam. Delhi's March Towards Statehood. New 
Delhi: UBS, 1993. 

Graham, B.D. Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics: The Origins 
and Development of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1990. 

Grover, Verinder, and Ranjana Arora, eds. Development of Politics 
and Government in India. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1994. 

Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. "Beyond "Culture:' Space 
Identity and the Politics of Difference," Cultural Anthropology, 
7, No. 1, February 1992, 6-23. 

Hachten, William A. The Growth of Media in the Third World. 
Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1993. 

Hardgrave, Robert L., Jr. Under Pressure: Prospects for Political Sta- 
bility. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1984. 

Hardgrave, Robert L.,Jr., and Stanley A. Kochanek. India: Gov- 
ernment and Politics in a Developing Nation. 5th ed. Fort Worth: 
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993. 

Hauser, Walter. "Violence, Agrarian Radicalism, and the Audi- 
bility of Dissent: Electoral Politics and the Indian People's 
Front." Pages 341-79 in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Gan- 
guly, eds., India Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority Governments 
in the Ninth and Tenth General Elections. Boulder, Colorado: 
Westview Press, 1993. 

Hauser, Walter, and Wendy Singer. "The Democratic Rite: Cele- 
bration and Participation in the Indian Elections," Asian Sur- 
vey, 26, No. 9, September 1986, 941-58. 

Hewitt, Vernon. "Undoing the Centre? The Sarkaria Commis- 
sion and the National Front Government in India." Pages 
183-96 in Subrata K. Mitra and James Chiriyankandath, eds., 
Electoral Politics in India: A Changing Landscape. New Delhi: 
Segment 1992. 

India. Backward Classes Commission. Report of the Backward 
Classes Commission, Government of India. 3 vols. Delhi: 1982- 
83. 



758 



Bibliography 



India. Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation. Report of the Com- 
mittee on Panchayat Raj Institutions. New Delhi: 1978. 

India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 
Reference Division. India, 1994: A Reference Annual. New 
Delhi: 1995. 

India. Planning Commission. Report of the Committee for the Study 

of Community Projects and National Extension Service. (Chair, 

Balwantrai Mehta.) New Delhi: 1957. 
India. Planning Commission. Seventh Five Year Plan, 1985-1990. 

New Delhi: 1985. 
"India." Pages 294-356 in The Far East and Australasia, 1995. 

26th ed. London: Europa, 1995. 
Jagmohan. My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir. New Delhi: Allied, 

1991. 

Jones, Kenneth W. The New Cambridge History of India, III. 1: 
Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Joshi, Shashi. Struggle for Hegemony in India, 1920-47: The Colo- 
nial State, the Left, and the National Movement. 3 vols. New 
Delhi: Sage, 1991. 

Khator, Renu. Environment, Development, and Politics in India. 
Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1991. 

Kishwar, Madhu, and Ruth Vanita. "Indian Women: A Decade 
of New Ferment." Pages 131-52 in Marshall M. Bouton and 
Philip Oldenberg, eds., India Briefing, 1989. Boulder, Colo- 
rado: Westview Press, in cooperation with the Asia Society, 
1989. 

Kochanek, Stanley A. "Briefcase Politics in India: The Congress 

Party and the Business Elite," Asian Survey, 27, No. 12, 

December 1987, 1279-1301. 
Kochanek, Stanley A. The Congress Party of India. Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1968. 
Kochanek, Stanley A. "Mrs. Gandhi's Pyramid." Pages 93-124 in 

Henry C. Hart, ed., Indira Gandhi's India: A Political System 

Reappraised. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1976. 
Kohli, A.B. First Citizens of India: Dr. Rajendra Prasad to Dr. 

Shanker Dayal Sharma: Profile and Bibliography. New Delhi: 

Reliance, 1995. 

Kohli, Atul. Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of 
Governability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 



759 



India: A Country Study 



Kohli, Atul. "From Elite Activism to Democratic Consolidation: 
The Rise of Reform Communism in West Bengal." Pages 
367-415 in Francine R. Frankel and M.S. A. Rao, eds., Domi- 
nance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order, 
2. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990. 

Kohli, Atul. "The NTR Phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh: Politi- 
cal Change in a South Indian State," Asian Survey, 28, No. 10, 
October 1988, 991-1017. 

Kohli, Atul. The State and Poverty in India. Cambridge: Cam- 
bridge University Press, 1987. 

Kopf, David. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern 
Indian Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. 

Kothari, Rajni. "The Congress 'System' in India," Asian Survey, 
4, No. 12, December 1964, 1161-73. 

Kothari, Rajni. "Continuity and Change in the Indian Party Sys- 
tem," Asian Survey, 10, No. 11, November 1970, 937-48. 

Kothari, Rajni. Politics in India. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. 

Kothari, Rajni. State Against Democracy: In Search of Humane Gov- 
ernance. Delhi: Ajanta, 1988. 

Kothari, Smitu. "Social Movements and the Redefinition of 
Democracy." Pages 131-62 in Philip Oldenburg, ed., India 
Briefing, 1993. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, in cooper- 
ation with The Asia Society, 1993. 

Krishen, Pradip. "Cinema and Television." Pages 159-79 in 
Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly, eds., India Votes: Alli- 
ance Politics and Minority Governments in the Ninth and Tenth 
General Elections. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Kumar, Dharma. "The Affirmative Action Debate in India," 
Asian Survey, 33, No. 3, March 1992, 290-302. 

Lawson, Edward, ed. Encyclopedia of Human Rights. New York: 
Taylor and Francis, 1989. 

Lewis, D.S., and D.J. Sagar, eds. Political Parties of Asia and the 
Pacific: A Reference Guide. Harlow, United Kingdom: Gale 
Research, 1992. 

Limaye, Madhu. Janata Party Experiment. Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 
1994. 

Maheshwari, Shriram. Indian Administrative System. New Delhi: 
Jawahar, for the Centre for Political and Administrative Stud- 
ies, 1994. 



760 



Bibliography 



Maheshwari, Shriram. The Mandal Commission and Mandalisa- 

tion: A Critique. New Delhi: Concept, 1991. 
Malik, Yogendra K, and Jesse F. Marquette. Political Mercenaries 

and Citizen Soldiers: A Profile of North Indian Party Activities. 

Delhi: Chanakya, 1990. 
Malik, Yogendra K., and V.B. Singh. "Bharatiya Janata Party: An 

Alternative to the Congress (I) to Govern?" Asian Survey, 32, 

No. 4, April 1992, 318-36. 
Mallick, Ross. Indian Communism: Opposition, Collaboration, and 

Institutionalization. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. 
Mangal Deo, Jai. "Voluntary Agencies vis-a-vis Government," 

Yojana [New Delhi], 31, No. 4, March 1-15, 1987, 11-13. 
Manor, James. "How and Why Liberal and Representative Poli- 
tics Emerged in India," Political Studies [Oxford], 38, No. 1, 

March 1990, 20-38. 
Manor, James. "Innovative Leadership in Modern India: M.K. 

Gandhi, Nehru, and I. Gandhi." Pages 187-214 in Gabriel 

Sheffer, ed., Innovative Leaders in International Politics. SUNY 

Series in Leadership Studies. Albany: State University of New 

York Press, 1993. 
Manor, James. "Parties and the Party System." Pages 62-98 in 

Atul Kohli, ed., India's Democracy: An Analysis of Changing 

State-Society Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 

1988. 

Manor, James. "Party Decay and Political Crisis in India," Wash- 
ington Quarterly, 4, No. 3, Summer 1981, 25-40. 

Mathur, Kuldeep. "The State and the Use of Coercive Power in 
India," Asian Survey, 32, No. 4, April 1992, 337-49. 

Mathur, Kuldeep, andJ.W. Bjorkman. Top Policy Makers in India 
(Cabinet Ministers and Their Civil Service Advisers). New Delhi: 
Concept, 1994. 

Matthew, George, ed. Panchayati Raj in Karnataka Today. New 
Delhi: Institute of Social Sciences and Concept, 1986. 

Mehrotra. N.C. The Socialist Movement in India. New Delhi: Radi- 
ant, 1995. 

Meyer, Ralph C, and David S. Malcolm. "Voting in India: 
Effects of Economic Change and New Party Formation," 
Asian Survey, 33, No. 5, May 1993, 507-19. 

Misra, B.B. The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern 
Times. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1961. 



761 



India: A Country Study 



Mitra, Subrata K. Power, Protest, and Participation: Local Elites and 
Development in India. New York: Routledge, 1992. 

Moog, Robert. "Indian Litigiousness and the Litigation Explo- 
sion: Challenging the Legend," Asian Survey, 33, No. 12, 
December 1993, 1136-50. 

Morris-Jones, W.H. Politics Mainly Indian. Madras: Orient Long- 
man, 1978. 

Mukherjee, Bimal Chandra. Administration in Changing India. 
New Delhi: Blaze, 1994. 

Mundle, Sudipto, and M. Govinda Rao. "Issues in Fiscal Policy." 
Pages 228-45 in Bimal Jalan, ed., The Indian Economy: Prob- 
lems and Prospects. New Delhi: Viking, 1992. 

Myrdal, Jan. India Waits. Trans., Alan Bernstein. Chicago: Lake 
View Press, 1986. 

Nadkarni, M.V Farmers' Movement in India. Ahmedabad: Allied, 
1987. 

Nicholas, Nugent. "Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress Party — The 
Road to Defeat." Pages 43-52 in Subrata K. Mitra and James 
Chiriyankandath, eds., Electoral Politics in India: A Changing 
Landscape. New Delhi: Segment, 1992. 

Nossiter, T.J. Marxist State Governments in India. London: Pinter, 
1988. 

Oldenburg, Philip. "Politics: How Threatening a Crisis?" Pages 
1-9 in Philip Oldenburg, ed., India Briefing, 1991. Boulder, 
Colorado: Westview Press, in cooperation with The Asia Soci- 
ety, 1991. 

Omvedt, Gail. "Kanshi Ram and the Bahujan Smaj Party." Pages 
153-69 in K.L. Sharma, ed., Caste and Class in India. Jaipur: 
Rawat, 1994. 

Omvedt, Gail. Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and 
the Socialist Tradition in India. Armonk, New York: Sharpe, 
1993. 

Over street, Gene D., and Marshall Windmiller. Communism in 
India. 2d ed. Bombay: Perennial, 1960. 

Peritore, N. Patrick. "Environmental Attitudes of Indian Elites: 
Challenging Western Postmodernist Models," Asian Survey, 
33, No. 8, August 1993, 804-18. 

Pravin, Anand, and Albert P. Blaustein, eds. "India Supple- 
ment, "Constitutions of the Countries of the World, 10. Dobbs 
Ferry, New York: Oceana, January 1992. 



762 



Bibliography 



Press Trust of India. The Tenth Round: Story of Indian Elections 
1991. Calcutta: Rupa, 1991. 

Rajagopal, Arvind. "The Rise of National Programming: The 
Case of Indian Television, Media," Media, Culture, and Society 
[London], 15, No. 1, January 1993, 91-111. 

Rao, Hemlata. "Financial Relations," Seminar [New Delhi], No. 
357, May 1989, 31-35. 

Ray, Ashwini. "Towards the Concepts of a Post-Colonial Democ- 
racy." Pages 127-49 in Zoya Hasan, S.N. Jha, and Rasheedud- 
din Khan, eds., The State Political Processes and Identity: 
Reflections on Modern India. New Delhi: Sage, 1988. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Robinson, Francis, and Paul R. Brass. "Introduction: The 
Development of the Indian National Congress." Pages 1-57 
in Paul R. Brass and Francis Robinson, eds., The Indian 
National Congress and Indian Society, 1885-1985. Delhi: Cha- 
nakya, 1987. 

Roy, Ramashray. "India in 1992: Search for Safety," Asian Survey, 

33, No. 2, February 1993, 119-28. 
Rubin, Barnett R. "The Civil Liberties Movement in India: New 

Approaches to the State and Social Change," Asian Survey, 

27, No. 3, March 1987, 371-92. 
Rubinoff, Arthur G. "India at the Crossroads," Journal of Asian 

and Africa Studies [Leiden], 28, Nos. 3-4, July-October 1993, 

198-216. 

Rudolph, Lloyd I. "The Faltering Novitiate: Rajiv at Home and 
Abroad in 1988." Pages 1-33 in Marshall M. Bouton and 
Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing, 1989. Boulder, Colo- 
rado: Westview Press, in cooperation with the Asia Society, 
1989. 

Rudolph, Lloyd I. "The Media and Cultural Politics." Pages 
159-79 in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly, eds., India 
Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority Governments in the Ninth and 
Tenth General Elections. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 
1993. 

Rudolph, Lloyd I. "The Subcontinental Empire and the 
Regional Kingdom in Indian State Formation." (Unpub- 
lished manuscript.) University of Chicago: 1990. 



763 



India: A Country Study 



Rudolph, Lloyd I. "Why Rajiv Gandhi's Death Saved the Con- 
gress: How an Event Affected the Outcome of the 1991 Elec- 
tion." Pages 436-47 in Harold A. Gould and Sumit Ganguly, 
eds., India Votes: Alliance Politics and Minority Governments in 
the Ninth and Tenth General Elections. Boulder, Colorado: West- 
view Press, 1993. 

Rudolph, Lloyd L, and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. The Moder- 
nity of Tradition: Political Development in India. Chicago: Uni- 
versity of Chicago Press, 1967. 

Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. In Pursuit of 
Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1987. 

Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. "Organisa- 
tional Adaptation of the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi's 
Leadership." Pages 85-102 in Richard Sisson and Ramashray 
Roy, eds., Diversity and Dominance in Indian Politics, 1: Chang- 
ing Bases of Congress Support. New Delhi: Sage, 1990. 

Rudolph, Susan Hoeber. "Comparative Perspectives on the His- 
tory of State Formation in India." Pages 15-29 in Subrata K. 
Mitra and James Chiriyankandath, eds., Electoral Politics in 
India: A Changing Landscape. New Delhi: Segment, 1992. 

Sarkar, Sumit. Modern India, 1885-1947. Madras: Macmillan, 
1983. 

Sathe, S.P. Constitutional Amendments in India, 1950-1988: Law 
and Politics. Bombay: Tripathi, 1989. 

Saxena, Rekha. Indian Politics in Transition: From Dominance to 
Chaos. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1994. 

Sen Gupta, Bhabani. Communism in Indian Politics. New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1972. 

Sethi, Harsh, and Smitu Kothari, eds. The N on-Party Process: 
Uncertain Alternatives. Delhi: Lokayan/UNRISD, 1985. 

Sharma, K.L., ed. Caste and Class in India. Jaipur: Rawat, 1994. 

Sharma, P.D., and Ramesh Kumar. "Legislators in an Indian 
State: A Study in Social Characteristics," Asian Survey, 32, No. 
11, November 1992, 1000-11. 

Shehth, D.L., and Harsh Sethi. "The NGO Sector in India: His- 
torical Context and Current Discourse," Voluntas: Interna- 
tional fournal of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations 
[Manchester], 2, No. 2, November 1991, 49-68. 



764 



Bibliography 



Singh, Gurharpal. "The Punjab Elections 1992: Breakthrough 
or Breakdown?" Asian Survey, 32, No. 11, November 1992, 
988-99. 

Singh, Gurharpal. "Understanding the 'Punjab Problem '," 

Asian Survey, 27, No. 12, December 1987, 1268-77. 
Singh, Hoshiar. "Constitutional Base for Panchayati Raj in 

India: The 73rd Amendment Act," Asian Survey, 34, No. 9, 

September 1994, 818-27. 
Singh, Mahendra Prasad. "The Dilemma of the New Indian 

Party System: To Govern or Not to Govern?" Asian Survey, 32, 

No. 4, April 1992, 303-17. 
Singh, Prakash. The Naxalite Movement in India. New Delhi: 

Rupa, 1995. 

Singhal, Arvind, and Everett M. Rogers. India's Information Rev- 
olution. Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1989. 

Sinha, Dipankar. "B.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, and 'Nowhere 
Polities' in India," Asian Survey, 31, No. 7, July 1991, 598-612. 

Smith, Chris. The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in 
Pakistan and Northern India. London: Center for Defence 
Studies, 1994. 

Som, Reba. 'Jawaharlal Nehru and the Hindu Code: A Victory 
of Symbol over Substance?" Modern Asian Studies [London], 
28, Pt. 1, February 1994, 164-94. 

Telford, Hamish. "The Political Economy of Punjab: Creating 
Space for Sikh Militancy," Asian Survey, 32, No. 11, Novem- 
ber 1992, 969-87. 

Tewary, I.N. People, Panchayat, and Parliament. New Delhi: Print 
Media, 1994. 

Thakur, Devendra, ed. District Planning and Panchayat Raj. New 
Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1991. 

Thakur, Ramesh Chandra. Government and Politics of India. New 
York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 

Thomas, Raju G.C., ed. Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of Con- 
flict in South Asia. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Tully, Mark, and Satish Jacob. Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi' s Last Battle. 
London: Cape, 1985. 

Tummala, Krishna K. "Democracy Triumphant: The Case of 
Andhra Pradesh," Asian Survey, 26, No. 3, March 1989, 378- 
95. 



765 



India: A Country Study 



Tummala, Krishna K. "India's Federalism under Stress," Asian 
Survey, 32, No. 6, June 1992, 538-53. 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency. Directorate of 
Intelligence. Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Gov- 
ernments. DI CS 95-004. Washington: April 1995. 

Varshney, Ashutosh. "Battling the Past, Forging a Future? 
Ayodhya and Beyond." Pages 9-42 in Philip Oldenburg, ed., 
India Briefing, 1993. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, in 
cooperation with The Asia Society, 1993. 

Varshney, Ashutosh. Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: 
Urban-Rural Struggles in India. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 1995. 

Varshney, Ashutosh. "India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies 
of Nationalism," Asian Survey, 31, No. 11, November 1991, 
997-1019. 

Verney, Douglas V. "From Executive to Legislative Federalism? 
The Transformation of the Political System in Canada and 
India," Review of Politics, 51, No. 2, Spring 1989, 241-63. 

Verney, Douglas V. "The Role of the Governor in India's 
Administrative Federalism," Indian Journal of Public Adminis- 
tration [New Delhi], 31, No. 4, October-December 1985, 
1243-68. 

Wade, Robert. "The Market for Public Office: Why the Indian 
State Is Not Better at Development," World Development, 13, 
No. 4, April 1985, 467-97. 

Wade, Robert. "The System of Administrative and Political Cor- 
ruption: Canal Irrigation in South India," Journal of Develop- 
ment Studies, 18, No. 3, April 1982, 287-328. 

Wallace, Paul. "Religious and Ethnic Politics: Political Mobiliza- 
tion in the Punjab." Pages 416-81 in Fran cine R. Frankel and 
M.S. A. Rao, eds., Dominance and State Power in Modern India: 
Decline of a Social Order, 2. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 
1990. 

Washbrook, David A. "Caste, Class, and Dominance in Modern 
Tamil Nadu: Non-Brahmanism, Dravidianism, and Tamil 
Nationalism." Pages 204-64 in Francine R. Frankel and 
M.S. A. Rao, eds., Dominance and State Power in Modern India: 
Decline of a Social Order, 1. New Delhi: Oxford University 
Press, 1989. 



766 



Bibliography 



Weiner, Myron. India at the Polls, 1980. Washington: American 

Enterprise Institute, 1983. 
Weiner, Myron. Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian 

National Congress. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. 
Who Are the Guilty ? Report of a Joint Inquiry into the Causes and 

Impact of the Riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November. New 

Delhi: People's Union for Democratic Rights and People's 

Union for Civil Liberties, 1984. 
Wood, John R. "India's Narmada River Dams: Sardar Sarovar 

under Siege," Asian Survey, 33, No. 10, October 1993, 968- 

84. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: "clari.world.asia.india" [elec- 
tronic newsgroup], 1994-95; Economic and Political Weekly [Bom- 
bay], 1991; Far Eastern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1994-95; 
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report: Near East 
and South Asia, 1994-95; Frontline [Madras], 1995; Guardian 
[Manchester], 1989; India Abroad, 1994; India Today [New 
Delhi], 1987-95; Keesing's Record of World Events [London], 
1994-95; New Republic, 1993; New York Times, 1989-94; and Semi- 
nar [New Delhi], 1989.) 

Chapter 9 

Ahmad, Imtiaz. State and Foreign Policy: India's Role in South Asia. 

New Delhi: Vikas, 1993. 
Anderson, Ewan W. An Atlas of World Political Flashpoints: A 

Sourcebook of Geopolitical Crisis. New York: Facts on File, 1993. 
Asia Yearbook. Annuals 1990 through 1995. Hong Kong: Far 

Eastern Economic Review, 1990-95. 
Ayoob, Mohammed. India and Southeast Asia: Indian Perceptions 

and Policies. New York: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; 

and Singapore: Routledge, 1990. 
Ayoob, Mohammed. "India in South Asia: The Quest for 

Regional Predominance," World Policy Journal, 7, No. 1, Win- 
ter 1989-90, 107-33. 
Babbage, Ross, and Sandy Gordon, eds. India's Strategic Future: 

Regional State or Global Power? New York: St. Martin's Press, 

1992. 



767 



India: A Country Study 



Bandyopadhyaya, Jayant. The Making of India's Foreign Policy. 
New Delhi: Allied, 1980. 

Banerji, Arun Kumar. "India and West Asia: Changing Images 
Reflect Shifts in the Regional Balance of Power," Round Table 
[London], No. 305, 1988, 26-38. 

Baral,J.K., and J.N. Mahanty. "India and the Gulf Crisis: The 
Response of a Minority Government," Pacific Affairs [Vancou- 
ver], 65, No. 3, Fall 1992, 368-84. 

Baral, Lok Raj. "India-Nepal Relations: Continuity and 
Change," Asian Survey, 32, No. 9, September 1992, 815-29. 

Batersky, M.V., and S.I. Lunyov. "India at the End of the Cen- 
tury: Transformation into an Asian Regional Power," Asian 
Survey, 30, No. 10, October 1990, 927-42. 

Baxter, Craig, Yogendra K. Malik, Charles H. Kennedy, and 
Robert C. Oberst. Government and Politics in South Asia. 3d ed. 
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1993. 

Bradnock, Robert W. India' s Foreign Policy since 1971. London: 
Royal Institute of International Affairs; and New York: Coun- 
cil on Foreign Relations Press, 1990. 

Brar, Bhupinder, ed. Collapse of the Soviet Union: Lessons for India. 
Delhi: Ajanta, 1993. 

Buszynski, Leszek. "ASEAN Security Dilemmas," Survival [Lon- 
don], 34, No. 4, 1992-93, 90-107. 

Chand, Khub. "India and the Federal Republic of Germany: 
Partners in Progress." Pages 163-74 in Satish Kumar, ed., 
Yearbook on India' s Foreign Policy, 1988-89. New Delhi: Sage, 
1989. 

Chaudhuri, Joyotpaul. "Federalism and the Siamese Twins: 
Diversity and Entropy in India's Domestic and Foreign Pol- 
icy," International Journal [Toronto], 48, No. 3, Summer 1993, 
448-69. 

Chellaney, Brahma. "Non-proliferation: An Indian Critique of 
U.S. Export Controls," Orbis, 38, No. 3, Summer 1994, 439- 

56. 

Chellaney, Brahma. "South Asia's Passage to Nuclear Power," 
International Security, 16, No. 1, Summer 1991, 43-72. 

Clad, James C. "India: Crisis and Transition," Washington Quar- 
terly, 15, No. 1, Winter 1992, 91-104. 

Cohen, Stephen Philip. "The Regional Impact of a Reforming 
India," Adelphi Paper [London], No. 276, April 1993, 83-93. 



768 



Bibliography 



Cohen, Stephen Philip. "The Soviet Union and South Asia." 
Pages 201-26 in Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E. Kaned, 
eds., The Limits of Soviet Power in the Developing World. Balti- 
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 

Cohen, Stephen Philip, ed. Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: 
The Prospects for Arms Control. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1991. 

Cohen, Stephen Philip, ed. The Security of South Asia: American 
and Asian Perspectives. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 
1987. 

DeSilva, Kingsley. India in Sri Lanka, 1983-1991. Occasional 
Paper, No. 25. Washington: Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson 
Center, 1992. 

Dhar, Pannalal N. India, Her Neighbours and Foreign Policy. New 
Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1991. 

Duncan, Peter J. S. The Soviet Union and India. London: The 
Royal Institute of International Affairs; and New York: Coun- 
cil on Foreign Relations Press, 1989. 

Fischer, Stephanie. "Israel and India: Forming a New Partner- 
ship," Near East Report, 36, No. 39, 1992, 182. 

Gaan, N. "Hopes and Realities in Indo-US Relations: From a 
Cold War to a Post-Cold War Perspective," India Quarterly 
[New Delhi], 48, No. 4, October-December 1992, 1-22. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "Avoiding War in Kashmir," Foreign Affairs, 69, 
No. 5, Winter 1990-1991, 57-73. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "India: Charting a New Course?" Current His- 
tory, 92, No. 578, December 1993, 426-30. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "The Sino-Indian Border Talks, 1981-1989: A 
View from New Delhi," Asian Survey, 29, No. 12, December 
1989, 1123-35. 

Ganguly, Sumit. Slouching Towards a Settlement: Sino-Indian Rela- 
tions, 1962-1993. Occasional Paper, No. 60. Washington: 
Asia Program, Woodrow Wilson Center, 1994. 

Ganguly, Sumit, and Kanti Bajpai. "India and the Crisis in Kash- 
mir," Asian Survey, 34, No. 5, May 1994, 401-16. 

Ghosh, Partha S. "Foreign Policy and Electoral Politics in India: 
Inconsequential Connection," Asian Survey, 34, No. 9, Sep- 
tember 1994, 807-17. 

Gordon, A.D.D. India's Security Policy: Desire and Necessity in a 
Changing World. Working Paper No. 236. Canberra: Strategic 



769 



India: A Country Study 



and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, 
1991. 

Gould, Harold A., and Sumit Ganguly, eds. The Hope and the 

Reality: U.S. -Indian Relations from Roosevelt to Reagan. Boulder, 

Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 
Grover, Verinder, ed. International Relations and Foreign Policy of 

India. 10 vols. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1992. 
Hagerty, Devin T. "India's Regional Security Doctrine," Asian 

Survey, 31, No. 4, April 1991, 351-63. 
Harrison, Selig S. "South Asia and the United States: A Chance 

for a Fresh Start," Current History, 91, No. 563, March 1992, 

97-105. 

Harrison, Selig S., and Geoffrey Kemp. India and America after 
the Cold War: Report of the Carnegie Endowment Study Group on 
U.S. -Indian Relations in a Changing International Environment. 
Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 
1993. 

Heimsath, Charles, and Surjit Mansingh. A Diplomatic History of 

Modern India. New Delhi: Allied, 1971. 
Hennayake, Shantha K. "The Peace Accord and the Tamils in 

Sri Lanka," Asian Survey, 29, No. 4, April 1989, 401-15. 
Horn, Robert C. Soviet-Indian Relations: Issues and Influence. New 

York: Praeger, 1982. 
Imhasly, Bernard. "India's Cautious Approach to the USA," 

Swiss Review of World Affairs [Zurich], 41, No. 1, April 1991, 

27-28. 

India. Ministry of External Affairs. Annual Report, 1991-92. 
New Delhi: 1992. 

India. Ministry of External Affairs. Annual Report, 1992-93. 
New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Ministry of External Affairs. Annual Report, 1994-95. 
New Delhi: 1995. 

India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Registrar General and Census 
Commissioner. Census of India, 1991: Final Population Totals: 
Brief Analysis of Primary Census Abstract, Series- 1, Paper-2 of 
1992, New Delhi: 1993. 

India. Parliament. Parliamentary News and Views Service. Com- 
pendium of Policy Statements Made in the Parliament: External 
Affairs. New Delhi: various dates. 



770 



Bibliography 



Jha, Nalini Kant. "Reviving U.S.-India Friendship in a Changing 
International Order," Asian Survey, 34, No. 12, December 
1994, 1035-46. 

Johal, Sarbjit. "India's Search for Capital Abroad: The U.S. 
Relationship," Asian Survey, 29, No. 10, October 1989, 971- 
82. 

Jones, Rodney W. "Old Quarrels and New Realities: Security in 
Southern Asia after the Cold War," Washington Quarterly, 15, 
No. 1, 1992, 105-28. 

Josh, Harcharan Singh, ed. India's Foreign Policy: Nehru to Rao. 
I.C.W.A. Seminar Publication Series. New Delhi: Indian 
Council of World Affairs, 1994. 

Kapur, Ashok. "The Indian Subcontinent: The Contemporary 
Structure of Power and the Development of Power Rela- 
tions," Asian Survey, 28, No. 7, July 1988, 693-710. 

Kapur, Harish. India' s Foreign Policy, 1947-92: Shadows and Sub- 
stance. New Delhi: Sage, 1994. 

Kolodziej, Edward A., and Roger E. Kanet, eds. The Limits of 
Soviet Power in the Developing World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 
University Press, 1989. 

Kreisberg, Paul H. "The United States, South Asia, and Ameri- 
can Interests," Journal of International Affairs, 43, No. 1, Sum- 
mer-Fall 1989, 83-95. ' 

Kumar, Satish. "Foreign Policy Trends." Pages 11-15 in Satish 
Kumar, ed., Yearbook on India' s Foreign Policy, 1987-88. New 
Delhi: Sage, 1988. 

Kumar, Satish. "Foreign Policy Trends." Pages 12-16 in Satish 
Kumar, ed., Yearbook on India's Foreign Policy, 1989. New Delhi: 
Sage, 1990. 

Kumar, Satish. "Foreign Policy Trends." Pages 1-11 in Satish 
Kumar, ed., Yearbook on India's Foreign Policy, 1990-91. New 
Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1991. 

Levin, Andre. "L'Inde a-t-elle encore les moyens de ses ambi- 
tions?" Strategique [Paris], 50, No. 2, 1991, 171-81. 

Liu, Xuecheng. The Sino-India Border Dispute and Sino-India Rela- 
tions. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994. 

Lockwood, David E., and Barbara Leitch LePoer. "Kashmir: 
Conflict and Crisis." Major Issues Systems, IB90087. Wash- 
ington: Congressional Research Service, Library of Con- 
gress, July 3, 1990. 



771 



India: A Country Study 



Makeig, Douglas C. "War, No War, and the India-Pakistan Nego- 
tiating Process," Pacific Affairs [Vancouver], 60, No. 3, 1987, 
271-94. 

Malik, J. Mohan. "India Copes with the Kremlin's Fall," Orbis, 
37, No. 1, Winter 1993, 69-87. 

Malik, J. Mohan. "India's Response to the Gulf Crisis: Implica- 
tions for Indian Foreign Policy," Asian Survey, 31, No. 9, Sep- 
tember 1991, 847-61. 

Mansingh, Surjit. "India-China Relations in the Post-Cold War 
Era," Asian Survey, 34, No. 3, March 1994, 285-300. 

Mansingh, Surjit. India's Search for Power: Indira Gandhi's Foreign 
Policy, 1966-82. New Delhi: Sage, 1984. 

Mansingh, Surjit, and Steven I. Levine. "China and India: Mov- 
ing Beyond Confrontation," Problems of Communism, 38, Nos. 
2-3, March-June 1989, 30-49. 

Mehra, Parshotam. An 'Agreed' Frontier: Ladakh and India's 
Northernmost Borders, 1846-1947. Delhi: Oxford University 
Press, 1992. 

Mehrotra, Santosh. India and the Soviet Union: Trade and Technol- 
ogy Transfer. Soviet and East European Studies, No. 73. New 
York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 

Menon, Rajan, and Henri J. Barkey. "The Transformation of 
Central Asia: Implications for Regional and International 
Security," Survival [London], 34, No. 4, 1992-93, 68-69. 

Mudiam, Prithvi Ram. India and the Middle East. London: Brit- 
ish Academic Press, 1994. 

Muni, S.D. "India and the Post-Cold War World: Opportunities 
and Challenges," Asian Survey, 31, No. 9, September 1991, 
862-74. 

Murthy, P.A. Narasimha. "Trends in India-Japan Relations." 

Pages 137-50 in Satish Kumar, ed., Yearbook on India' s Foreign 

Policy, 1989. New Delhi: Sage, 1989. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Jawaharlal Nehru's Speeches. 5 vols. New 

Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and 

Broadcasting, 1958-68. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru. 16 vols. 2d 

Series. New Delhi: Jawaharlal Memorial Fund, 1988-92. 
Nehru, Jawaharlal. Towards Freedom: An Autobiography. New 

York: Day, 1941. 



772 



Bibliography 



Nester, William R. Japan and the Third World: Patterns, Power, 
Prospects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 

Ollapally, Deepa, and Raja Ramanna. "U.S.-India Tensions: Mis- 
perceptions on Nuclear Proliferation," Foreign Affairs, 74, No. 
1, January-February 1995, 13-18. 

Palmer, Norman D. The United States and India: The Dimensions of 
Influence. New York: Praeger, 1984. 

Panya, Amit. "Kashmir: The Way Forward," Journal of Asian and 
African Affairs [New Delhi], 2, No. ljuly 1990, 1-6. 

Rais, Rasul B. "Afghanistan and Regional Security after the 
Cold War," Problems of Communism, 41, No. 3, 1992, 82-94. 

Ranganathan, C.V. "China, The 'Asian Miracle' and India- 
China Relations," Indian Defence Review [New Delhi], 9, No. 
4, October-December 1994, 9-18. 

Rao, P. Venkateshwar. "Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: India's 
Role and Perception," Asian Survey, 28, No. 4, April 1988, 
419-36. 

Razvi, S.M. Mujtaba. "India and the Security of the Indian 
Ocean/South Asia," Round Table [London], No. 311, July 
1989, 317-22. 

Rizvi, Hasan-Askari. Pakistan and the Geostrategic Environment: A 
Study of Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Rose, Leo E., and Eric Gonsalves, eds. Towards a New World 
Order: Adjusting India-U.S. Relations. Research Papers and Pol- 
icy Studies, No. 38. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 
University of California, 1992. 

Rubinoff, Arthur G. "Commonalities and Dissimilarities in 
American and Canadian Approaches Towards the Indian 
Subcontinent," Contemporary South Asia [Abingdon, United 
Kingdom], 1, No. 3, 1992, 393-405. 

Rubinoff, Arthur G. "The Multilateral Imperative in India's 
Foreign Policy," Round Table [London], No. 319, July 1991, 
313-34. 

Rubinoff, Arthur G. "Political Integration in Goa," Journal of 
Developing Societies [Leiden], 11, No. l,June 1995, 36-50. 

Saikal, Amin. "The Future of India and Southwest Asia." Pages 
122-43 in Ross Babbage and Sandy Gordon, eds., India's 



773 



India: A Country Study 



Strategic Future: Regional State or Global Power? New York: St. 
Martin's Press, 1992. 

Saikal, Amin. India in Southwest Asia. Working Paper No. 1990/ 
4. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian 
National University, 1990. 

Shah, Sayed Mehtab Ali. "Anatomy of Indo-Pak Discord," Jour- 
nal of Asian and African Affairs [New Delhi], 1, No. 1, July 
1989, 35-47. 

Shaumian, Tatyana L. "India's Foreign Policy: Interaction of 
Global and Regional Aspects," Asian Survey, 28, No. 11, 
November 1988, 1161-69. 

Shukul, H.C. India's Foreign Policy: The Strategy of Nonalignment. 
Delhi: Chanakya, 1993. 

Singh, Jasjit, ed. Indo-US Relations in a Changing World: Proceed- 
ings of the Indo-US Strategic Symposium. New Delhi: Lancer, in 
association with Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 
1992. 

Sismanidis, Roxane D.V. "China's International Security Pol- 
icy," Problems of Communism, 40, No. 4, July-August 1991, 49- 
62. 

Sreedhar, John Kaniyalil, comp. Indo-Pak Relations: A Documen- 
tary Study. New Delhi: ABC, 1993. 

Sudhakar, E. SAARC: Origin, Growth, and Future. New Delhi: 
Gyan, 1994. 

Tanham, George K. "Indian Strategic Culture," Washington 
Quarterly, 15, No. 1, Winter 1992, 129-42. 

Taylor, Jay. The Dragon and the Wild Goose: China and India. With 
New Epilogue. New York: Praeger, 1991. 

Thakur, Ramesh. "India and the Soviet Union: Conjunctions 
and Disjunctions of Interests," Asian Survey, 31, No. 9, Sep- 
tember 1991, 826-46. 

Thakur, Ramesh Chandra. "Normalizing Sino-Indian Rela- 
tions," Pacific Review [London], 4, No. 1, 1991, 5-18. 

Thakur, Ramesh, and Carlyle A. Thayer. Soviet Relations with 
India and Vietnam. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 

Tharoor, Shashi. Reasons of State: Political Development and India's 
Foreign Policy under Indira Gandhi, 1966-1977. New Delhi: 
Vikas, 1982. 

Thomas, Raju G.C. "The Security and Economy of a Reforming 
India," Adelphi Paper [London], No. 276, April 1993, 62-82. 



774 



Bibliography 



Thomas, Raju G.C., ed. Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of Con- 
flict in South Asia. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

United Nations. Department of Public Information. Peace-Keep- 
ing Information Notes, 1993: Update No. 1. New York: March 
1993. 

Untawale, Mukund G. "India and the World," Conflict, 11, No. 

2, April-June 1991, 113-30. 
Varshney, Ashutosh. "India, Pakistan, and Kashmir: Antinomies 

of Nationalism," Asian Survey, 31, No. 11, November 1991, 

997-1019. 

Viswam, S. "South-east and East Asia," World Focus [New Delhi], 
12, Nos. 11-12, November-December 1991, 52-54. 

Wang Hongyu. "Sino-Indian Relations: Present and Future," 
Asian Survey, 35, No. 6, June 1995, 546-54. 

Ward, Richard Edmund. India's Pro-Arab Policy: A Study in Conti- 
nuity. New York: Praeger, 1992. 

Wariavwalla, Bharat. "India in 1987: Democracy on Trial," Asian 
Survey, 28, No. 2, February 1988, 119-25. 

Wariavwalla, Bharat. "India in 1988: Drift, Disarray, or Pat- 
terns?" Asian Survey, 29, No. 2, February 1989, 189-98. 

Yadav, R.S. "India and the Indian Ocean in the 1990s," Asian 
Profile [Hong Kong], 20, No. 5, October 1992, 415-25. 

Yadav, R.S., ed. India' s Foreign Policy Towards 2000 A. D. New 
Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1993. 

Yearbook on India' s Foreign Policy, 1987-88. Ed., Satish Kumar. 
New Delhi: Sage, 1988. 

Yearbook on India' s Foreign Policy, 1989. Ed., Satish Kumar. New 
Delhi: Sage, 1989. 

Yearbook on India's Foreign Policy, 1990-91. Ed., Satish Kumar. 
New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1991. 

Zheng Ruixiang. "Shifting Obstacles in Sino-Indian Relations," 
Pacific Review [London], 6, No. 1, 1993, 63-70. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Asiaweek [Hong Kong], 
1992; Beijing Review [Beijing], 1994; Christian Science Monitor, 
1992; Economic and Political Weekly [Bombay], 1980-91; Far East- 
ern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1987-94; Far Eastern Eco- 
nomic Review, Asia Yearbook [Hong Kong], 1985-92; Foreign 
Affairs Record [New Delhi], 1990-94; Foreign Broadcast Infor- 
mation Service, Daily Report: China, 1994-95; Foreign Broadcast 



775 



India: A Country Study 



Information Service, Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, 
1993-95: India Today [New Delhi], 1991-92; Indian Express 
[New Delhi], 1992; Nation, 1992; New York Tunes, 1992-95: 
Sainik Samachar [New Delhi], 1994; Strategic Analysis [New 
Delhi], 1989-91: Times of India [New Delhi], 1993; Washington 
Post, 1993-95; and Washington Tunes, 1992.) 

Chapter 10 

Akbar, M J. The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation's Unity. Lon- 
don: Penguin, 1985. 

Ali, S. Mahmud. The Fearful State: Power, People, and Internal War 
in South Asia. London: Zed, 1993. 

Amnesty International. India: Torture, Rape, and Deaths in Cus- 
tody London: 1992. 

.Amnesty International USA. Amnesty International Report, 1994. 
New York: 1994. 

Amnesty International USA. Amnesty International Report, 1995. 
New York: 1995. 

Amnesty International USA. India: Torture and Deaths in Custody 
injammu and Kashmir. New York: January 1995. 

Andrade, John. World Police and Paramilitary Forces. Basingstoke, 
United Kingdom: Macmillan, 1985. 

Asia Society. Contemporary Affairs Department. Study Group. 
Preventing Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia. New York: 1995. 

Asia Watch /Physicians for Human Rights. A Pattern, of Impunity. 
New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993. 

Bain, William W. "Sino-Indian Military Modernization: The 
Potential for Destabilization," Asian Affairs, 21, No. 3, Fall 
1994, 131-47. 

Bajpai, Kanti P., and Harish C. Shukul, eds. Interpreting World 

Politics: Essays for A.P. Rana. New Delhi: Sage, 1995. 
Baruah, Sanjib. "Immigration, Ethnic Conflict, and Political 

Turmoil — Assam 1979-1985," Asian Survey, 26, No. 11, 

November 1986, 1184-1206. 
Brar, K.S. Operation Blue Star: The True Story. New Delhi: UBS, 

1993. 

Brass, Paul R. The New Cambridge History of India, TV, 1: The Poli- 
tics of India since Independence. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- 
versity Press, 1990. 



776 



Bibliography 



Brines, Russell. The Indo-Pakistani Conflict. New York: Pall Mall, 
1968. 

Bristow, Damon. India's New Armament Strategy: A Return to Self- 
Sufficiency? RUSI Whitehall Paper Series, 1995. London: 
Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, 1995. 

Chattopadhyay, Rupak. "Indian Maritime Security: Case for a 
Blue Water Fleet," Indian Defence Review [New Delhi], 9, No. 
3, July 1994, 79-85. 

Chellaney, Brahma. Nuclear Proliferation: The U.S. -Indian Con- 
flict. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993. 

Chopra, S.C. "India's Maritime Security Concerns." Pages 92- 
108 in Jasjit Singh, ed., Maritime Security. New Delhi: Institute 
for Defence Studies and Analyses, 1993. 

Cohen, Stephen Philip. The Indian Army: Its Contributions to the 
Development of a Nation. Berkeley: University of California 
Press, 1971. 

Cohen, Stephen Philip, ed. Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: 
The Prospects for Arms Control. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1991. 

Das, Samir Kumar. UFLA: United Liberation Front of Assam — A 

Political Analysis. Delhi: Ajanta, 1994. 
Datta, Prabhat Kumar. Regionalism of Indian Politics. New Delhi: 

Sterling, 1993. 

Dixit, Aabha. "Indian Defence Industry Programmes: Current 
Stand and Cooperation Projects," Military Technology [Bonn], 
38, No. 12, December 1994, 16-23. 

Elkin, Jerrold R, and W. Andrew Ritezel. "The Debate on 
Restructuring India's Higher Defense Organization," Asian 
Survey, 24, No. 10, October 1984, 1069-85. 

Elkin, Jerrold E, and W. Andrew Ritezel. "Military Role Expan- 
sion in India," Armed Forces and Society, 11, No. 4, Summer 
1985, 489-504. 

Encyclopedia of Police in India. 2 vols. Eds., S.K. Ghosh and K.F. 

Rustamji. New Delhi: Ashish, 1993-94. 
Fay, Peter Ward. The Forgotten Army: India's Armed Struggle for 

Independence, 1942-45. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan 

Press, 1993. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "Avoiding War in Kashmir," Foreign Affairs, 69, 
No. 5, Winter 1990-91, 57-73. 



777 



India: A Country Study 



Ganguly, Sumit. "Ethno-Religious Conflict in South Asia," Sur- 
vival, [London], 35, No. 2, Summer 1993, 88-109. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "From the Defense of the Nation to Aid to the 
Civil: The Army in Contemporary India." Pages 11-26 in 
Charles H. Kennedy and David J. Louscher, eds., Civil-Mili- 
tary Interaction in Asia and Africa. Leiden: Brill, 1991. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "From the Defence of the Nation to Aid to the 
Civil: The Army in Contemporary India, "Journal of Asian and 
African Studies [Leiden], 26, Nos. 1-2, January-April 1991, 
11-26. 

Ganguly, Sumit. The Origins of War in South Asia: The Indo-Paki- 
stani Conflicts since 1947. 2d ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview 
Press, 1994. 

Ganguly, Sumit. "Why India Joined the Nuclear Club," Bulletin 
to the Atomic Scientists, 39, No. 4, April 1983, 30-33. 

Ganguly, Sumit, and Kanti Bajpai. "India and the Crisis in Kash- 
mir," Asian Survey, 34, No. 5, May 1994, 401-16. 

Garver, John W. "China-India Rivalry in Nepal: The Clash over 
Chinese Arms Sales," Asian Survey, 31, No. 10, October 1991, 
956-75. 

Ghosh, Partha S. Conflict and Cooperation in South Asia. New 

Delhi: Manohar, 1989. 
Ghosh, Partha S. "Nuclear Rivalry in South Asia: Strategic 

Imperatives and National Pride," Conflict Studies [London], 

No. 274, September 1994, 1-22. 
Ghosh, S.K. Women and Crime. New Delhi: Ashish, 1993. 
Goldston, James A., and Patricia Gossman. Human Rights in 

India: Kashmir under Siege. An Asia Watch Report. New York: 

Human Rights Watch, May 1991. 
Gordon, Sandy. "Economic Growth Dissipated on Regional 

Arms Race," Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter [Prahan], 21, Nos. 6- 

7, December 1994-January 1995, 46-49. 
Gordon, Sandy. India's Rise to Power in the Twentieth Century and 

Beyond. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 
Gordon, Sandy. "Indian Defense Spending: Treading Water in 

the Fiscal Deep," Asian Survey, 32, No. 10, October 1992, 

934-50. 

Gould, Harold A. "The Utopian Side of the 1857 Uprising." 
Pages 86-116 in David Plath, ed., Aware of Utopia. Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 1971. 



778 



Bibliography 



Handa, Tejinder. "Reorganisation of Indian Armed Forces," 
Combat Journal [Mhow], 20, No. 2, August 1993, 23-31. 

Heehs, Peter. "The World at War: India's Divided Loyalties?" 
History Today, 45, No. 7, July 1995, 16-23. 

Hills, Carol, and Daniel C. Silverman. "Nationalism and Femi- 
nism in Late Colonial India: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment, 
1943-1945," Modern Asian Studies [London], 27, Pt. 4, Octo- 
ber 1993, 741-60. 

Hoffmann, Steven. India and the China Crisis. Berkeley: Univer- 
sity of California Press, 1990. 

Horn, Robert C. Soviet-Indian Relations: Issues and Influence. New 
York: Praeger, 1982. 

Inder Singh, Anita. "India's Relations with Russia and Central 
Asia," International Affairs, 71, No. 1, January 1995, 69-81. 

India. Ministry of Defence. Annual Report, 1992-93. New Delhi: 
1993. 

India. Ministry of Defence. Defence Services Estimates, 1993-94. 

New Delhi: 1993. 
India. Ministry of Defence. Defence Services Estimates, 1994-95. 

New Delhi: 1994. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Amnesty International Report. 

India: Torture, Rape, and Deaths in Custody: Allegations and 

Facts. New Delhi: n.d. [ca. 1993]. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Legal Provisions for Protection of 

Human Rights. New Delhi: n.d. 
India. Ministry of Home Affairs. Profile of Terrorist Violence in 

Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi: n.d. [ca. 1993]. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Directorate 

of Advertising and Visual Publicity. Union Budget, 1993-94: 

Imparting a New Dynamism to the Indian Economy. No. 2/39/92 

PPL New Delhi: March 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1992: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: February 1993. 
India. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Research and 

Reference Division. India 1993: A Reference Annual. New 

Delhi: January 1994. 
Ispahani, Mahnaz. "India's Role in Sri Lanka's Ethnic Conflict." 

Pages 209-39 in Ariel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and 

Larry Berman, eds., Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynam- 



ic 



India: A Country Study 



ics of Protracted Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press, 
1992. 

Jackson, Robert. South Asian Crisis: India, Pakistan, Bangla Desk. 
Studies in International Security, No. 17. London: Institute 
for Strategic Studies, 1975. 

Jane's All the World's Aircraft, 1994-95. 85th ed. Ed., Mark Lam- 
bert. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 
1994. 

Jane's Armour and Artillery, 1994-95. 15th ed. Ed., Christopher 
F. Foss. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information 
Group, 1994. 

Jane's Fighting Ships, 1994-95. 97th ed. Ed., Richard Sharpe. 
Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 
1994. 

Jane's Infantry Weapons, 1994-95. 20th ed. Ed., Ivan V. Hogg. 
Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 
1994. 

Jane's Land-Based Air Defence, 1994-95. 7th ed. Eds., Tony Cullen 
and Christopher F. Foss. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's 
Information Group, 1994. 

Jane's Military Vehicles and Logistics, 1994-95. 15th ed. Eds., 
Christopher F. Foss, and Terry J. Gander. Coulsdon, United 
Kingdom: Jane's Information Group, 1994. 

Jane's Radar and Electronic Warfare Systems, 1994-95. 6th ed. Ed., 
Bernard Blake. Coulsdon, United Kingdom: Jane's Informa- 
tion Group, 1994. 

Jogindar Singh. Behind the Scene: An Analysis of India's Military 
Operations, 1947-1971. New Delhi: Lancer International, 
1993. 

Joshi, Manoj. Combating Terrorism in Punjab. Conflict Studies, 
No. 261. London: Research Institute for the Study of Con- 
flict and Terrorism, May 1993. 

Joshi, Manoj. "India's Nuclear Submarine Plans," Asia-Pacific 
Defence Reporter [Prahan], 21, Nos. 6-7, March-April 1995, 
52. 

Kadian, Rajesh. India and Its Army. New Delhi: Vision Books, 
1990. 

Kadian, Rajesh. The Kashmir Tangle. Boulder, Colorado: West- 
view Press, 1993. 



780 



Bibliography 



Kapur, Rajiv A. Sikh Separatism: The Politics of Faith. London: 
Allen and Unwin, 1986. 

Karnad, Bharat. Future Imperilled: India's Security in the 1990s and 
Beyond. New Delhi: Viking, 1994. 

Kasturi, Bhashyam. "Military Intelligence in India: An Analy- 
sis," Indian Defence Review [New Delhi], 9, No. 1, January 
1994, 71-74. 

Kavic, Lome J. India's Quest for Security. Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1967. 

Khanna, D.D., and P.N. Mehrotra. Defence Versus Development: A 
Case Study of India. New Delhi: Indus, 1993. 

Kohli, Kailash. "Aviation in Indian Coast Guard," Sainik Sam- 
achar [New Delhi], 41, No. 5, January 30, 1994, 9-11. 

Kolff, Dirk H. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the 
Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1859. Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 1990. 

Kukreja, Veena. Civil-Military Relations in South Asia: Pakistan, 
Bangladesh, and India. New Delhi: Sage, 1991. 

Kundu, Apurba. "The Indian Armed Forces' Sikh and Non- 
Sikh Officers' Opinions of Operation Blue Star," Pacific 
Affairs [Vancouver], 67, No. 1, Spring 1994, 46-69. 

Longer, V. Red Coats to Live Green: A History of the Indian Army, 
1600-1974. New Delhi: Allied, 1993. 

Makeig, Douglas C. "'Aid-To-Civil': Indian Army and Paramili- 
tary Involvement in Domestic Peacekeeping." Washington: 
Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1984. 

Makeig, Douglas C. "National Security." Pages 203-46 in James 
Heitzman and Robert L. Worden, eds., Bangladesh: A Country 
Study. 2d ed. DA Pam 550-175. Washington: GPO, 1989. 

Mama, Hormuz. "India and Pakistan Retreat from the Brink," 
International Defense Review [Geneva], 23, No. 8, 1990, 851- 
52. 

Manwani, Ranjna. Indigenisation of Defence. New Delhi: Associ- 
ated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, May 
1990. 

Mathur, Kuldeep. "The State and the Use of Coercive Power in 
India," Asian Survey, 32, No. 4, April 1992, 337-49. 

Maxwell, Neville. India's China War. New York: Doubleday, 
1972. 



781 



India: A Country Study 



Menezes, S.L. Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Sev- 
enteenth to the Twenty-first Century. New Delhi: Penguin, 1993. 

The Military Balance: 1992-1993. London: International Insti- 
tute for Strategic Studies, 1992. 

The Military Balance: 1994-1995. London: International Insti- 
tute for Strategic Studies, 1994. 

The Military Yearbook, 1991-92. 23d ed. Ed., J. Baranwal. New 
Delhi: Guide, 1991. 

Mishra, Rashmi, and Samarendra Mohanty. Police and Social 
Change in India. New Delhi: Asish, 1992. 

Mohan Ram. Sri Lanka: The Fractured Island. New Delhi: Pen- 
guin, 1989. 

Mukerjee, Dilip. "U.S. Weaponry for India," Asian Survey, 27, 

No. 6, June 1987, 595-614. 
Nanda, Ravi. India's Security in New World Order. New Delhi: 

Lancer, 1994. 

Narain, Partap. Indian Arms Bazaar. Delhi: Shipra, 1994. 
Neier, Aryeh, and David Rothman. Prison Conditions in India. 

An Asia Watch Report. New York: Human Rights Watch, 

April 1991. 

Nirmal, Anjali. Role and Functioning of Central Police Organisa- 
tions. New Delhi: Uppal, 1992. 

Palit, D.K. War in the High Himalaya. London: Hurst, 1991. 

Parmar, Leena. Society, Culture, and Military System. Indian 
Sociological Studies. Jaipur: Rawat, 1994. 

Pettigrew, Joyce J. M. The Sikhs of the Punjab: Unheard Voices of 
State and Guerrilla Violence. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: 
Zed, 1995. 

Preston, Antony. "World Navies in Review," U.S. Naval Institute 
Proceedings, 121, No. 3, March 1995, 96-116. 

Racioppi, Linda. Soviet Policy Towards South Asia since 1970. Cam- 
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 

Robinson, Francis, ed. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of India, Paki- 
stan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Rodrigues, Sunith Francis. Maximizing Effectiveness of Central 
Police Organisations. New Delhi: June 1993. 

Schwartzberg, Joseph E. "An American Perspective II," Asian 
Affairs, 22, No. 1, Spring 1995, 71-87. 



782 



Bibliography 



Schwartzberg, Joseph E., ed. A Historical Atlas of South Asia. 2d 
impression. Reference Series of Association for Asian Stud- 
ies, No. 2. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Sehgal, B.P. Singh, ed. Law, Judiciary, and Justice in India. New 
Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1993. 

Sen, Lionel Protip. Slender Was the Thread: Kashmir Confronta- 
tion, 1947-48. Bombay: Orient Longman, 1969. 

Shah, Giriraj. Elite Forces of India. 2 vols. New Delhi: Cosmo, 
1994. 

Shah, Giriraj. Image Makers: An Attitudinal Study of Indian Police. 

New Delhi: Abhinav, 1993. 
Sharma, R. "Indian Peacekeeping Contingent in Somalia," 

Indian Defence Review [New Delhi], 10, No. 2, April-June 

1995, 41-44. 

Singh, Depinder. The IPKF in Sri Lanka. Delhi: Trishul, 1991. 

Singh, Jagjit. Indian Gunners at War: The Western Front, 1971. 
New Delhi: Lancer International, 1994. 

Singh, Jasjit, ed. Indo-US Relations in a Changing World: Proceed- 
ings of the Indo-US Strategic Symposium. New Delhi: Lancer, in 
association with Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, 
1992. 

Singh, Jasjit, ed. Maritime Security. New Delhi: Institute for 
Defence Studies and Analyses, 1993. 

Singh, Surinder Nihal. "Why India Goes to Moscow for Arms," 
Asian Survey, 24, No. 7, July 1984, 707-20. 

Sisson, Richard, and Leo E. Rose. War and Secession: Pakistan, 
India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. Berkeley: University of 
California Press, 1990. 

Smith, Chris. India's Ad Hoc Arsenal: Arms Procurement in Histori- 
cal Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 

Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies and Industries. Direc- 
tory of Indian Aerospace, 1993. Bangalore: Interline, 1993. 

SP's Military Yearbook, 1992-93. 24th ed. Ed., J. Baranwal. New 
Delhi: Guide, 1992. 

SP's Military Yearbook, 1993-94. 25th ed. Ed., J. Baranwal. New 
Delhi: Guide, 1993. 

Srivasata, H.K. "UN Peace Support Operations (PSOs) and 
India: The Need for a New Approach," Combat Journal 
[Mhow], 21, No. 3, December 1994, 33-39. 



783 



India: A Country Study 



Subramanian, K.S. "Police Organization in India: A Historical 

and Contemporary Assessment," Indian Defence Review [New 

Delhi],. 10,. Xo. 1,. January-March 1995,. 35-40. 
Tanham, George K. "Indian Strategic Culture." Washington 

Quarterly, 15, Xo. 1, Winter 1992, 129-42. 
Tanham, George K. Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive 

Essay. Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1992. 
Thomas, Raju G.C. The Defence of India: A Budgetary Perspective of 

Strategy and Politics. New Delhi: Macmillan. 1978. 
Thomas, Raju G.C. Democracy) Security, and Development in India. 

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. 
Thomas, Raju G.C. Indian Security Policy. Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1986. 
Thomas, Raju G.C. "India's Xuclear and Space Programs: 

Defense or Development?" World Politics. 38, Xo. 2, January 

1986, 315-42. 

Thomas, Raju G.C. "South .Asian Security in the 1990s," Adelphi 
Paper [London], Xo. 278, July 1993, 3-86. 

Thomas, Raju G.C, ed. Perspectives on Kashmir: The Roots of Con- 
flict in South Asia. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1992. 

Tullv, Mark, and Satish Jacob. Amntsar: Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle. 
London: Cape, 1985. 

United Xations. Department of Public Information. The Blue 
Helmets: A Review of United Xations Peace-keeping. United 
Xations Publication Xo. E. 90. 1. 18. New York: August 1990. 

United Xations. Department of Public Information. Peace-Keep- 
ing Information Notes, 1993: Update Xo. 1. New York: March 
1993. 

United States. Department of State. Country Reports on Human 
Rights Practices for 1993. Report submitted to United States 
Congress, 103d, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Com- 
mittee on Foreign .Affairs, and Senate, Committee on For- 
eign Relations. Washington: GPO, February 1994. 

Vaughn. Bruce. "The Use and Abuse of Intelligence Services in 
India," Intelligence and National Security, 8, Xo. 1, January 
1993, 1-22. 

Wirsing, Robert G. India, Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: On 
Regional Conflict and Its Resolution. Xew York: St. Martin's 
Press, 1994. 



784 



Bibliography 



Wolpert, Stanley. A New History of India. 4th ed. New York: 
Oxford University Press, 1992. 

"World Defence Almanac, 1993-94: India," Military Technology 
[Bonn], 28, No. 1, January 1994, 222, 224-25. 

Wulf, H. "India: The Unfulfilled Quest for S elf-Sufficiency." 
Pages 125-45 in Michael Brzoska and Thomas Ohlson, eds., 
Arms Production in the Third World. London: Taylor and Fran- 
cis for Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 
1986. 

(Various issues of the following publications also were used 
in the preparation of this chapter: Asiaweek [Hong Kong], 
1994; Christian Science Monitor, 1988; Defense News, 1994; Far East- 
ern Economic Review [Hong Kong], 1994-95; Foreign Broadcast 
Information Service, Daily Report: China, 1994; Foreign Broad- 
cast Information Service, Daily Report: Near East and South Asia, 
1993-95; India Today [New Delhi], 1990; Jane's Defence Weekly 
[Coulsdon, United Kingdom], 1995; New York Times, 1994-95; 
Sainik Samachar [New Delhi], 1993-94; U.S. Naval Institute Pro- 
ceedings, 1994; and Washington Post, 1994-95.) 



785 



Glossary 



All-India Muslim League (Muslim League) — Founded in 1906 
in Dacca (Dhaka), in what then was the province of East- 
ern Bengal and Assam, by Muslim representatives from 
throughout India and Burma as a counterpoise to the 
Indian National Congress (q.v.). 

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) — Founded in 
1967 for the purpose of promoting regional stability, eco- 
nomic development, and cultural exchange. ASEAN's 
membership includes Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the 
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. India is a 
"dialogue partner" along with Austria, Canada, China, 
Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), 
Russia, and the United States. 

Backward Classes — Citizens of India otherwise defined as mem- 
bers of Scheduled Castes (q.v.), Scheduled Tribes (q.v.), 
and other low-ranking and disadvantaged groups (some- 
times referred to as Other Backward Classes). Discrimina- 
tion against the Backward Classes is prohibited by Article 
15 of the Indian constitution. The Backward Classes 
reportedly constitute an estimated 52 percent of India's 
population. The Mandal Commission (q.v.) identified 
3,743 Backward Classes. 

Brahman (s) — From the Sanskrit brahmana, one of four major 
caste groups (varna) or social classes. Brahmans are the 
highest caste group, traditionally made up of priests, phi- 
losophers, scholars, and religious leaders. Not to be con- 
fused with brahman (q.v., the Absolute Reality). 

brahman — The Absolute Reality, the eternal, supreme, or ulti- 
mate principle. A state of pure transcendence. In some 
Vedantic schools of Hindu thought, a Supreme Being who 
is the cause of the universe, with theistic attributes. Not to 
be confused with Brahman (q.v., the priestly caste group). 

British Raj (1858-1947)— The period of direct rule of India by 
the British government. The period began with the demise 
of the Mughal Empire and of East India Company rule 
and ended with the achievement of independence by 
India and Pakistan. During this time, the British crown was 
represented in India by a viceroy. 

Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Develop- 



787 



India: A Country Study 

ment in Asia and the Pacific (Colombo Plan) — Founded 
in 1950 to coordinate and aid development among newly 
independent countries. Members include nations 
throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Donor countries 
include Australia, Britain, Canada, India, Japan, New 
Zealand, and the United States. The headquarters are in 
Colombo, Sri Lanka. 
Congress — See Indian National Congress. 

crore — A unit of measure equal to 10 million (or 100 lakh, 

q.v.). 

Dalit(s) — Sanskrit word meaning burst, split, broken, crushed, 
or destroyed but, since the nineteenth century, often 
taken to mean downtrodden; used in reference to 
Untouchables (Harijans, q.v.), outcastes, Scheduled Castes 
{q.v.), and others living in a reduced social state. 

Devanagari — Literally, "the script of the city of the gods." Script 
used in the written forms of Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, 
Tibetan, Sanskrit, and in some forms of Konkani. In use in 
North India throughout the second millennium A.D. 

dharma — A divinely ordained code of proper conduct. 

fiscal year (FY) — April 1 to March 31. The fiscal year from April 
1, 1995 through March 31, 1996, for example, is desig- 
nated FY 1995. 

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — A United Nations 
specialized agency established in 1945 to raise living stan- 
dards and increase the availability of agricultural products. 

gross domestic product (GDP) — A value measure of the flow of 
domestic goods and services produced by an economy 
over a period of time, such as a year. Only output values of 
goods for final consumption and intermediate production 
are assumed to be included in the final prices. GDP is 
sometimes aggregated and shown at market prices, mean- 
ing that indirect taxes and subsidies are included; when 
these indirect taxes and subsidies have been eliminated, 
the result is GDP at factor cost. The word gross indicates 
that deductions for depreciation of physical assets have 
not been made. See also gross national product. 

gross national product (GNP) — Gross domestic product (q.v.) 
plus net income or loss stemming from transactions with 
foreign countries, including income received from abroad 
by residents and subtracting payments remitted abroad to 
nonresidents. GNP is the broadest measurement of the 
output of goods and services by an economy. It can be cal- 



788 



Glossary 

culated at market prices, which include indirect taxes and 
subsidies. Because indirect taxes and subsidies are only 
transfer payments, GNP is often calculated at factor cost by 
removing indirect taxes and subsidies. 
Group of Fifteen (G-15) — Group of Third World countries 
that participated in the Conference on International Eco- 
nomic Cooperation held in several sessions between 
December 1975 and June 1977. At the Ninth Nonaligned 
Movement Summit in Belgrade in May 1989, the G-15 was 
designated a "Summit Level Group of South-South Consul- 
tation and Cooperation" and charged with opening a dia- 
logue with the industrialized nations, specifically the 
members of the Group of Seven (Canada, France, Ger- 
many, Italy, Japan, Britain, and the United States). G-15 
summits were held in Kuala Lumpur (June 1990), Caracas 
(November 1991), Dakar (November 1992), and New 
Delhi (March 1994). The group includes Algeria, Argen- 
tina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, 
Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, and 
Zimbabwe. 

guru — In the Sikh faith, one of ten spiritual leaders and teach- 
ers, the first of whom was Nanak Dev, the last being 
Gobind Singh. In Hinduism, a religious teacher or guide. 

Harijans — Term introduced by Mahatma Gandhi for Untouch- 
ables. Literal meaning is children of God. Militant mem- 
bers of this group prefer to be called Dalit (q.v.) in self- 
recognition of their historical oppression. 

imam(s) — In general use and lower-cased, imam means the 
leader of congregational prayers; as such it implies no 
ordination or special spiritual powers beyond sufficient 
education to carry out this function. Imam is also used fig- 
uratively by many Sunni (q.v.) Muslims to mean the leader 
of the Islamic community. Among Shia (q.v.) Muslims, the 
word is usually upper-cased and takes on many complex 
and controversial meanings; in general, however, it indi- 
cates that particular descendant of the House of Ali who is 
believed to have been God's designated repository of the 
spiritual authority inherent in that line. The identity of 
this individual and the means of ascertaining his identity 
have been the major issues causing divisions among Shias. 

Indian National Congress — Founded in 1885; before and after 
1947, popularly called Congress or the Congress. A major 
force in the independence movement, the Congress has 



789 



India: A Country Study 

been dominant in Parliament and formed governments 
from 1947 to 1977, 1980 to 1985, and 1991 to 1996. In 
1969 the Congress split, and the ruling party under Indira 
Gandhi became known as Congress (R) — R for Requisi- 
tion — while the faction opposed to her was called Con- 
gress (O) — O for Organisation. In 1978 she renamed her 
party Congress (I) — I for Indira. There also have been 
Congress (S) — S for Socialist or Secular — and Congress 
(U) — for Urs, named after its founder Devanaj Urs — splin- 
ter groups. 

International Monetary Fund (IMF) — Established along with 
the World Bank (q.v.) in 1945, the IMF is a specialized 
agency affiliated with the United Nations and is responsi- 
ble for stabilizing international exchange rates and pay- 
ments. The main business of the IMF is the provision of 
loans to its members (including industrialized and devel- 
oping countries) when they experience balance of pay- 
ments difficulties. These loans frequently carry conditions 
that require substantial internal economic adjustments by 
the recipients, most of which are developing countries. 

jati — Literally, birth group. Basic endogamous unit of the caste 
system. There are approximately 3,000 jatis in contempo- 
rary society. The word jati is also sometimes used for eth- 
nic, religious, or linguistic groups. 

karma — Literally, action. Spiritual merit or demerit that a 
being acquired in a previous incarnation and is acquiring 
in present existence. 

lakh — A unit of measure equal to 100,000. Also see crore (q.v.). 

Mandal Commission — A government-appointed commission, 
officially the Second Backwards Classes Commission, 
chaired by former member of Parliament Bindhyeshwari 
Prasad Mandal from December 1978 to December 1980. 
Of the five members, four were from Backward Classes 
(q.v.) and one was from a Scheduled Caste (q.v.). The com- 
mission's controversial December 1980 report (the Mandal 
Commission Report of the Backward Classes Commission) called 
for reserving 27 percent of all services and public-sector 
undertakings under the central government and 27 per- 
cent of all admissions to institutions of higher education 
(except in states that have reserved higher percentages) 
for Backward Class members and Dalits (q.v.). In August 
1990, Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh announced 
his support for the radical affirmative-action 1980 propos- 



790 



Glossary 



als. The First Backward Classes Commission existed from 
January 1950 to March 1955. 

Muslim League — See All-India Muslim League. 

Nonaligned Movement — Established in September 1961 with 
the aim of promoting the concept of political and military 
nonalignment (q.v.) apart from the traditional East and 
West blocs. India was among the original members. The 
Nonaligned Movement in 1995 included 107 members 
plus the Palestine Liberation Organization, twenty-one 
observer nations and organizations, and twenty-one 
"guest" nations. 

nonalignment — The ideological basis of Indian foreign policy, 
first articulated byjawaharlal Nehru: refusal to align India 
with any bloc or alliance, peaceful settlement of interna- 
tional disputes, the Panch Shila (q.v.), anticolonialism, 
antiracism, and international cooperation to promote eco- 
nomic development. 

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) — 
Established on September 14, 1960, with the aim of coor- 
dinating the members' petroleum policies and prices. 
Members include Algeria, Gabon, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, 
Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab 
Emirates, and Venezuela. 

Panch Shila — Literally, five principles of foreign policy: mutual 
respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual 
nonaggression, mutual noninterference in internal affairs, 
equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. 
The Panch Shila were enunciated byjawaharlal Nehru in 
April 1954 in a trade agreement with China and adopted 
as a keystone of relations among nations at the Asian-Afri- 
can Conference (the Bandung Conference) held in Ban- 
dung, Indonesia, in 1955. 

panchayat — A council of five or more. Found both in villages 
and in jatis (q.v.). Also refers to an administrative grouping 
of villages under constitutionally mandated elected coun- 
cils. 

pandit(s) — Honorific for erudite individual, sometimes taken 
as personal or family name. Various Brahmans (q.v.) (such 
as the family of Jawaharlal Nehru) were known as pandits. 
Sometimes transliterated as pundit. 

Punjab — State in India (and a province in adjacent Pakistan). 
Term the Punjab usually refers to either the pre-1947 state 
of British India or the geographic region centered on the 



791 



India: A Country Study 

five major rivers, whence its name, panch ab, meaning five 
waters, or rivers. 

rupee (Rp; Rs — plural) — Basic unit of currency consisting of 
100 paise. From September 1949 to June 1966, the official 
value of the rupee was Rs4.76 per US$1. From June 1966 
through mid-December 1971, the official value was Rs7.50 
per US$1, and from mid-December 1971 to late June 1972, 
the value was Rs7.28 per US$1. Thereafter, the official 
value of the rupee as compared with the United States dol- 
lar began to fall, from Rs7.44 in 1971-72 to Rs 8.08 in 
1979-80 to Rsl2.24 in 1985-86 to Rsl4.48 in 1988-89, 
Rsl6.66 in 1989-90, Rsl7.95 in 1990-91, Rs24.52 in 1991- 
92, and Rs26.41 in 1992-93. A dual exchange-rate system 
was established in March 1992, and, starting in March 
1993, the exchange rate was reunified at the free-market 
rate. As of July 1996, US$1 was worth Rs35.67. Aluminum- 
magnesium, stainless steel, and cupro-nickel coins are 
minted at the Calcutta and Bombay mints for circulation 
in five, ten, twenty, twenty-five, and fifty paise and Rsl and 
Rs2 denominations. Bank notes issued by the Reserve 
Bank of India are issued in denominations of Rsl, Rs2, 
Rs5, RslO, Rs20, Rs50, RslOO, and Rs500. 

satyagraha — Method employed by Mahatma Gandhi and his 
followers to secure sociopolitical reform by nonviolent, 
passive resistance and noncooperation; the individual fol- 
lowing the method is called a satyagrahi. 

Scheduled Areas — Article 244 of the Indian constitution allows 
the government to compile a schedule (list) of areas of the 
country occupied by Scheduled Tribes (q.v.). The Sixth 
and Ninth Schedules of the constitution list the Scheduled 
Areas. 

Scheduled Castes — Article 341 of the Indian constitution 
allows thegovernment to compile a schedule (list) of 
castes, races, or tribes or parts of groups within castes, 
races, or tribes that are economically and socially disadvan- 
taged and are therefore entitled to protection and speci- 
fied benefits under the constitution. Untouchables, also 
known as Harijans (q.v.) or Dalits (q.v.), constitute the bulk 
of Scheduled Castes. See also Scheduled Tribes (q.v.). The 
1991 census tabulated 138 million Scheduled Caste mem- 
bers throughout India, representing about 16 percent of 
the total population. The largest numbers were in Uttar 
Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil 



792 



Glossary 



Nadu. The schedule in the constitution does not list the 
Scheduled Castes by name. 

Scheduled Languages — Article 351 of the Indian constitution 
allows the government to compile a schedule (list) of lan- 
guages recognized by the government for use in state legis- 
latures. The Eighth Schedule, written in 1950, lists 
Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, 
Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, 
Telugu, and Urdu. Sindhi was added to the schedule in 
1967, and Konkani, Manipuri, and Nepali were added in 
1992. Article 343 of the constitution designates Hindi writ- 
ten in Devanagari (q.v.) as the official language of India. 
Even though it was supposed to be phased out by 1965, 
English continues as India's other official language for use 
in Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the high courts 
unless otherwise authorized by the president. 

Scheduled Tribes — Article 342 of the Indian constitution 
includes a schedule (list) of tribes or tribal communities 
that are economically and socially disadvantaged and are 
entitled to specified benefits. The tribes are listed in the 
Fifth Schedule. The 1991 census tabulated 67.8 million 
members of Scheduled Tribes throughout India, repre- 
senting about 8 percent of the total population. The larg- 
est numbers are in Maharashtra, Orissa, and West Bengal. 
See also Scheduled Castes (q.v.). 

Shia (from Shiat Ali, the Party of Ali) — A member of the 
smaller of the two great divisions of Islam. The Shia sup- 
ported the claims of Ali and his line to presumptive right 
to the caliphate and leadership of the Muslim community, 
and on this issue they divided from the Sunnis (q.v.) in the 
major schism of Islam. Later schisms have produced fur- 
ther divisions among the Shia over the identity and num- 
ber of imams (q.v.). Most Shia revere twelve Imams, the 
last of whom is believed to be hidden from view. 

South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — 
Comprises the seven nations of South Asia: Bangladesh, 
Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka; 
founded as the South Asia Regional Cooperation (SARC) 
organization at a meeting of foreign ministers in New 
Delhi on August 1-2, 1983. A second organizational meet- 
ing of foreign ministers was held in Thimphu in May 1985, 
followed by the inaugural meeting of heads of state and 
government in Dhaka on December 7-8, 1985. SAARC's 



793 



India: A Country Study 

goal is to effect economic, technical, and cultural coopera- 
tion and to provide a forum for discussions of South Asian 
political problems. 

Sufi(s) — Comes from suf, the Arabic word for "wool." The term 
derives from the practice of wearing a woolen robe, a sign 
of dedicating oneself to the mystical life, known in Islam as 
becoming a Sufi. Sufis seek mystical union with God and 
have been condemned by some Sunni (q.v.) legal schools. 

Sunni — Comes from sunna, meaning "custom," with connota- 
tions of orthodoxy. One of the two great divisions of Islam, 
the Sunnis supported the traditional method of election to 
the caliphate and accepted the Umayyad line. On this 
issue, they divided from the Shia (q.v.) belief in the first 
great schism within Islam. 

swadeshi — Literally, of one's own country. A preindependence 
movement to further the use of Indian-made items, partic- 
ularly cottage-industry products, such as hand-loomed 
cloth, and to oppose British-made goods. 

tribal — In addition to its use as an adjective — tribal land or 
tribal customs — the word is also used as a noun to describe 
a tribesperson, tribesman, or tribeswoman. 

twice-born — Referring to jatis (q.v.) claiming membership in 
one of the three upper varnas (q.v.), that is, Brahman 
(q.v), Kshatriya, and Vaishya. Male member's natural birth 
is followed by a sprititual rebirth in a rite involving investi- 
ture with a sacred thread. 

varna — Literally, color. One of the four large caste groups 
(Brahman (q.v.) Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Sudra) from 
which most jatis (q.v.) are believed to derive. 

World Bank — Informal name used to designate a group of four 
affiliated international institutions: the International Bank 
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the Interna- 
tional Development Association (IDA), the International 
Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Multilateral Invest- 
ment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). The IBRD, established 
in 1945, has the primary purpose of providing loans at 
market-related rates of interest to developing countries at 
more advanced stages of development. The IDA, a legally 
separate loan fund but administered by the staff of the 
IBRD, was set up in 1960 to furnish credits to the poorest 
developing countries on much easier terms than those of 
conventional IBRD loans. The IFC, founded in 1956, sup- 
plements the activities of the IBRD through loans and 



794 



Glossary 



assistance designed specifically to encourage the growth of 
productive private enterprises in the less-developed coun- 
tries. The MIGA, founded in 1988, insures private foreign 
investment in developing countries against various non- 
commercial risks. The president and certain officers of the 
IBRD hold the same positions in the IFC. The four institu- 
tions are owned by the governments of the countries that 
subscribe their capital. To participate in the World Bank 
group, member states must first belong to the Interna- 
tional Monetary Fund (q.v.). 
zamindar(s) — Landlord, but particularly the group of land- 
lords and the zamindar system that emerged after the Brit- 
ish Permanent Settlement (Landlease) Act of 1793. In 
essence, the former revenue collectors of the Mughal 
period (1526-1858) became landlords under the British. 



795 



Index 



Abdullah, Farooq, li, 487, 494, 521; cor- 
ruption under, 494; dismissed, 521 

Abdullah, Sheikh Mohammed, 486, 493, 
494; accession to India under, 520; 
arrested, 487; as chief minister of 
Jammu and Kashmir, 487 

abortion, 254; of female fetuses, 93, 252, 
253, 291 

Abu Bakr, 156 

Achaemenid Empire, 9 

acharyas, 1 32-33 

acquired immune deficiency syndrome 
(AIDS) , 64; and blood supply, 99; and 
HIV infection, 97, 98, 98-99; discrimi- 
nation against people with, 98; spread 
of, 98, 99; suspected cases of, 97, 98 

Adhikary, Man Mohan, 530 

Adi Granth (Original Book), 164 

Advani, Lai Krishna, 1; arrested, 477, 497; 
in BJP, 480; Ramjanmabhumi Temple 
pilgrimage of, 477, 497 

Afghanistan: border with, 516; relations 
with, 541; Soviet invasion of, xlviii, 55, 
517, 523, 538-39, 543-44, 548; Soviet 
withdrawal from, 551 

Africans, 213-14; under British, 213-14; 
geographic distribution of, 214; under 
Mughals, 213-14; religion of, 214 

aghoris, 280 

Agni, 121 

AGP. See Asom Gana Parishad 
Agra, 23 

Agreement on a Comprehensive Politi- 
cal Settlement of the Cambodia Con- 
flict, 537 

agricultural cooperatives, 392, 412; agri- 
cultural processing in, 422; credit 
from, 418, 419-20; dairy, 412-13; 
inputs from, 420; marketing by, 422, 
423; value of produce marketed by, 
422-23 

agricultural credit, 317, 418-21; from 
banks, 418-19; from cooperatives, 
418, 419-20; support for, 426 

agricultural development, 391-404; 



under British, 391; goals of, 392; gov- 
ernment role in, 382-83, 392; policy, 

391- 93 

agricultural development programs, 
393-404; administration of, 393-94; 
education, 393, 394-96; extension, 
393, 394-97; finance, 393; in five-year 
plans, 394; marketing, 393, 423; 
research, 393, 394-96; technology, 
393, 402-3; types of, 393 

agricultural growth, 299; rates, 404-7 

agricultural inputs, 393, 400-2, 397; dis- 
tribution of, 420; fertilizer, xxxviii, 
305, 400-1, 407; machinery, 402-3; 
pesticides, 401-2; production of, 420; 
seeds, xxxviii, 310, 400, 407, 410, 426 

agricultural marketing, 421-24; coopera- 
tives for, 422; government control of, 
421-22, 423-24; support for, 426 

agricultural policy: goals of, 393 

agricultural prices, 403-4; policy for, 
403-4; supports for, 381 

Agricultural Prices Commission, 403 

Agricultural Produce (Grading and Mar- 
keting) Act (1937), 423 

agricultural production, 402, 404-12; 
decreases in, 403; increases in, 394; 
limitations on, 394 

agricultural products (see also under indi- 
vidual crops): barley, 384; commercial 
crops, 382, 407, 409-10; corn, 384, 
407; cotton, 298, 303, 305, 331, 368, 
381, 385, 404, 409-10, 422, 425; crop 
failures of 1972-73, 54; fodder crops, 
385; fruit, 384; grading of, 423; grain, 
4, 300, 305, 307-8, 310, 381-82, 391, 

392- 93, 403, 404, 407-9, 411, 422, 
423, 424; inspection of, 423; jute, 297, 
298, 368, 381, 404, 409, 410, 422; mil- 
let, 384, 385, 407, 408; nontraditional 
crops, 382; nuts, 384, 386; oilseeds, 
303, 368, 382, 384, 385, 404, 407, 409; 
output, 404-10; potatoes, 384; pulses, 
381, 382, 384, 385, 403, 404, 407, 408, 
410-11; rice, 75, 368, 382, 384, 385, 



797 



India: A Country Study 



404, 407-8, 411, 425, 427; silk, 384; 
sorghum, 384, 385, 407, 408; sugar, 
303, 382, 384, 385, 404, 407, 409, 422; 
tea, 384, 425-26, 488; tree crops, 383; 
vegetables, 385; warehouses for, 423, 
426; wheat, 382, 384, 385, 404, 407, 
408, 410-11; yield, 404 
agricultural taxation, 314-15, 421 
agricultural workers: as bonded labor, 
328; families of, 242; land distributed 
to, 388; as percentage of work force, 
325, 389-89; wages for, 391 
agriculture, 281; aid to, 426-27; ancient, 
4; in budget, 393; cropping patterns 
in, 382, 383; under Delhi Sultanate, 
17; and economic reforms, 427-28; 
education in, 391; employment in, 
297, 381, 392; energy consumed by, 
339; exports, 381, 424-26; under 
five-year plans, 309, 310, 311, 312; in 
Godavari River basin, 75; in Great 
Indian Desert, 384; growth in, 391-92; 
in Himalayas, 383-84; importance of, 
233; in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 384-85; 
livestock patterns in, 383; mechaniza- 
tion in, 402-3; as percentage of gross 
domestic product, 297, 299-300, 381; 
as percentage of gross national prod- 
uct, 392; research in, 364, 368, 368, 
391; SAARC program for, 559; scien- 
tific and technical support for, 358, 
402-3 

ahimsa (nonviolence), xli, 10, 126, 177, 
569 

Ahmad Shah Abdali, 26 
Ahmad Shah Durrani, 26 
Ahmadabad, 23, 290; airport, 354 
Ahmed, Fakhruddin Ali, 54 
Ahriman, 172 

Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd), 172 
AIADMK. See All-India Anna Dravida 

Munnetra Kazhagam 
AIDS. See acquired immune deficiency 

syndrome 

aircraft manufacturing: government 

control of, 304 
air transportation, 352-54; accidents, 

352, 354; government control of, 342; 

hijackings, 354, 524; investment in, 

306 

air force, 590-91; aircraft of, 590, 591; 
area commands, 590-91; British offi- 



cers in, 570; budget for, 583; chief of 
staff, 569, 590; creation of, 567, 590; 
diversity in, 594; educational qualifica- 
tion for, 393; expansion of, 564, 568; 
insignia, 595; intelligence, 604; inter- 
nal security mission of, 564; judge 
advocate general's department, 605; 
modernization of, 564; number of 
personnel, 590; ranks, 595; recruit- 
ment, 592; surveillance by, 577; in 
third Indo-Pakistani war, 573-74; 
training, 590, 591; uniforms, 595; 
women in, 292 

Air Force Academy, 591 

Air Force Act of 1950, 604 

Air India, 352 

airlines, 352 

airports, 354; upgrades needed, 342 
Aiyanar, 143 

Akali Dal (Eternal Party), xliv-xlv, 166- 
67; attempts to undermine, 608; con- 
stituency of, 486; origins of, 166, 486; 
platform of, 167, 486, 491 

Akashvani. See All-India Radio 

Akbar,Jalal-ud-Din (1556-1605), 20-23, 
162; administrative system of, 21-23; 
expansion under, 20-21; reforms 
under, 23; taxes under, 21 

Akhil Bharatiya Gorkha League. SeeAXl 
India Gorkha League 

Aksai Chin: China's occupation of, 520, 
574; dispute over, 532-33, 574 

Alam, Shah, 29 

Ala-ud-din, 16, 17 

Ala-ud-Din Bahman Shah (Zafar Khan), 
17 

alcoholism, 132 
Alexander the Great, 9 
Ali, 156 

Aligarh Muslim University (see also 
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Col- 
lege), 162; science program, 371 

Allahabad airport, 354 

Allahabad University, 109 

All Bodo Students' Union, 488 

All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra 
Kazhagam (AIADMK), 485 

All-India Backward, Scheduled Caste, 
Scheduled Tribe, Other Backward 
Classes, and Minority Communities 
Employees Federation (BAMCEF), 
490 



798 



Index 



All-India Congress (I) Committee, 473 
All-India Council of Technical Educa- 
tion, 109 

All India Democratic Women's Associa- 
tion, 292 

All-India Education Survey, 194 

All India Gorkha League (Akhil 
Bharatiya Gorkha League), 224, 226 

All-India Gurdwara Act, 491 

All-India Hospitals Post-partum Pro- 
gramme, 90 

All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, 
98 

All-India Muslim League. See Muslim 
League 

All India Radio (Akashvani), 356, 501 

All-India Trade Union Congress, 327 

All-Party Hurriyat Conference, 495 

aluminum, 341; reserves, 341 

aluminum industry, 331-32; exports by, 
332, 341; growth of, 331 

al-Zamani, Maryam, 21-22 

Amar Das, Guru, 162-63 

Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji (B.R.), 131, 
271, 275; constitution drafted by, 433 

Amherst, William Pitt, 31 

Amindivi Islands, 71 

Amnesty International, 565, 606 

Amritsar, 163, 491 

Anandabazar Patrika, 500 

Anandabazar Patrika Group, 500 

Anandpur Sahib Resolution (1973), 491 

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 71; cli- 
mate of, 71; language of, 181; military 
installations on, 536; rural population 
of, 88; topography of, 71; tribes in, 
169, 200 

Andamese language, 181 

Andhra Kingdom. See Satavahana King- 
dom 

Andhra Pradesh (state): Africans in, 214; 
agriculture in, 385, 404; education in, 
112, 216; fertilizer consumption in, 
400; forests in, 413; formed, xliv, 215; 
Green Revolution in, 412; language 
in, 215; language minorities in, 196; 
language riots in, 196; legislature of, 
455; oil in, 338; political uprisings in, 
483; political violence in, 214-15, 216, 
217; politics of, 485-86; proportional- 
ity in, 215-16; Scheduled Castes in, 88; 
sex ratio in, 253; Telangana Move- 



ment in, 49, 214-18; tribes in, 200; 
universities in, 109 

Angad, Guru, 162 

Anglican Church, 170 

Anglo-Indians, 212-13; affirmative 
action for, 437, 443; assimilation of, 
213; language of, 212; occupations of, 
212, 213; origins of, 212; rejection of, 
212; schools of, 212-13; segregation 
of, 212 

Angola: peacekeeping forces in, 579 
Angra Mainyu, 172 
Annadurai, C.N., 485 
Anthropological Survey of India, 182, 
192 

Anti-Defection Bill, 469 

Anti-Eve Teasing Squad, 615 

Antrix Corporation, 374 

ANZ Grindlays Bank, 317 

Apabhramshas, 186 

aquaculture, 416; research, 368 

Arabian Sea: islands in, 71 

Arab-Israeli dispute, 537-38 

Arabs: influence of, 18; Islam introduced 
by, 15; and mathematics, 359; in 
Sindh, 15; trade with, 14, 15 

Arabsat. See Arab Satellite Communica- 
tion Organization 

Arab Satellite Communication Organiza- 
tion (Arabsat), 375 

archaeological research, 4, 5 

Arjun Das, Guru: executed, 23, 163 

armed forces {see also paramilitary 
forces; see also under individual services; 
see also under military), 569-70; under 
British Raj, 565-69; British officers in, 
570; buildup of, 517, 536; commander 
in chief, 446, 569; conditions of ser- 
vice, 594-95; cooperation of services, 
578; cutbacks in, xlix; diversity in, 594; 
educational qualification for, 592-93; 
expansion of, 563; impact of partition 
on, 569; intelligence, 604; internal 
security missions of, 564, 605-7; in 
Jammu and Kashmir, 494; moderniza- 
tion of, 563; pay and benefits in, 594; 
peacekeeping role of, 599; pensions, 
594; physical standards for, 592; 
recruitment for, 566, 568, 591-94; 
reserves, 592, 600-601; restructuring 
of, 566; retirement, 594; selectivity of, 
592; term of service in, 592; training, 



799 



India: A Country Study 



591-94; uniforms, ranks, and insignia 
of, 595 

Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) 
Special Powers Act (1990), 606 

Armed Forces Provident fund, 594 

army, 583-87; area commands, 583; artil- 
lery, 584; aviation, 584; under British, 
37, 565; British officers in, 570; budget 
for, 583; chief of staff , 569, 580, 583; 
deployment of, 237; diversity in, 594; 
educational standards for, 592-93; 
Gorkhas in, 592; insignia, 595; intelli- 
gence, 604; internal security by, 564, 
605; judge advocate general's depart- 
ment, 605; materiel, 583-84; of Maur- 
yan Empire, 10; number of personnel 
in, 583; ranks, 595; recruitment, 592; 
reorganization of, 37; training of, 
584-87; uniforms, 595 

Army Act of 1954, 604 

Army Cadet College 

Army of Shivaji. See Shiv Sena 

art: Buddhist, 130; religious influence 
on, 119, 130 

Arthashastra (Science of Material Gain), 
10, 124 

artisans: and caste, 267, 271; displace- 
ment of, 275; status of, 267, 279; in vil- 
lages, 283 

Arunachal Pradesh, 534; forests in, 413; 
Scheduled Tribes in, 88; teachers in, 
107; tensions of, with central govern- 
ment, 227; tribes in, 199, 200, 206-7 

Aryabhatta, 13 

Aryan people, xxxvi, 5-8; culture of, 6-7; 
geographic distribution of, 6-7, 8; lan- 
guage of, 7; law of, 8; religion of, 7 

Arya Samaj (Arya Society) , 1 74-75 

Arya Society. See Arya Samaj 

ASEAN. See Association of Southeast 
Asian Nations 

Ashoka (269-232 B.C.), 10 

Ashura, 158-59 

ashrama {see also life stages) , 7 

Ashtadhyayi (Panini), 185, 359 

Asia. See Central Asia; South Asia; South- 
east Asia 

Asian-African Conference (1955), 558 

Asian Relations Meeting (1947), 558 

Asia Television Network, 357 

Asia Watch, 565,606 

Asom Gana Parishad (AGP — Assam Peo- 



ple's Assembly): formed, 488; in 
National Front, 477; platform of, 487 

Assam (state): agriculture in, 196; auton- 
omy movement in, 516; Buddhists in, 
131; climate of, 78; education in, 112; 
human rights violations in, 565; immi- 
grants to, 196, 487, 610; insurgency in, 
564, 605, 610; language riots in, 196; 
oil in, 337, 338; political parties in, 
487; under President's Rule, 488; rural 
population of, 88; teachers in, 107; 
tensions of, with central government, 
226; tribes in, 199,200, 227 

Assam Accord (1985) , 487-88, 610 

Assamese language, 182; as language of 
instruction, 207; native speakers of, 
182; pidgin version, 202 

Assam People's Assembly. See Asom Gana 
Parishad 

Assam Rifles, 598 

Assam Valley, 68 

Assembly of Lions. See Singh Sabha 
Association of Southeast Asian Nations 
(ASEAN), 536-37; agreement with, 

323 

astronomy, 360; in Rig Veda, 359 
atomic energy: government control of, 
304 

Atomic Energy Commission, 372 
atomic weapons, 300 
Audits and Accounts Service, 461 
Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, 
375 

Aurangzeb (1658-1707), 24, 26, 164 

Austin, Granville, 433 

Australia: relations with, 555 

Austria: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319; 

traders from, 30, 211 
Austroasiatic languages, 181; number of 

speakers of, 187 
automobile industry: price controls on, 

305 

Avadhi language, 191 
Avesta, 172 
Avestan language, 5 

Ayodhya: mosque in, 149, 176; violence 

in, 149, 176, 302 
Ayyappan, 144 

Azad, Maulana Abdul Kalam: as Con- 
gress leader, 43 

Azad Hind Fauj. See Indian National 
Army 



800 



Index 



Azad Kashmir (Free Kashmir) , 570, 571 



Baba Dayal, 166 

BabaSri Chand, 162 

Babri Masjid (see also Ramjanmabhumi 
Temple), 149; agitation against, 477, 
480; destroyed, xlvi, 149, 176, 481, 
497; opened to Hindus, 497; police 
protection of, 613; Supreme Court 
decision on, 471; violence over, 302 

Babur, Zahir-ud-Din (1526-30), 20 

Babur Namah (Babur), 20 

Backward Classes Commission report. 
See Mandal Commission report 

Backward Classes: definition of members 
of, 200, 437; education of, 111; as per- 
centage of population, 274, 490; polit- 
ical activities of, X, 431, 432; political 
affiliation of, 463, 481, 490; in prison, 
619 

Bactrian people, 11 

Badrinath: Hindu seat of learning at, 

132; pilgrimage to, 152 
Baghdad Jews, 174 

Bahadur Shah II (1837-57): exiled, 36 
Bahmani Sultanate (1347-1527), 17-18; 

collapse of, 18; rivalry of, with Vija- 

yanagar, 18; taxes under, 18 
Bahuchara Mata, 280 
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP — Party of 

Society's Majority), 431; constituency 

of, 471, 472; founded, 490; support 

for, 490 

Bajrang Dal (Party of the Adamani-Bod- 

ied) , 496 
Bakht, Sikandar, 480 
Bakr Id, 159 

balance of payments: and balance of 
trade, 323; crisis, 297, 299, 302-3, 315; 
difficulties, 321, 324; and foreign assis- 
tance, 323; pressure on, 302; vulnera- 
bility of, 306 

balance of trade: and balance of pay- 
ments, 323 

ballistic missiles, 511, 517, 549, 601-2, 
620 

Baluchistan: ancient civilization in, 4 
Balwantrai Mehta Commission report, 
458 

BAMCEF. See All-India Backward, Sched- 
uled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, Other 



Backward classes, and Minority Com- 
munities Employees Federation 

Banaras. SeeVaranasi 

Bandaranaike, Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias, 
527,577 

Bangalore, 290; airport, 354; population 
of, 285; Tata Institute facility in, 376; 
technology in, 369, 376 

Bangladesh: aid to, 321, 526; border 
with, 63, 71, 73-74, 516; fertility rate 
in, 93; independence of, xlvi, xlviii, 
521; membership of, in SAARC, 559; 
refugees from, 53, 85, 299, 526, 610; 
relations with, 509, 526, 543; water dis- 
tribution with, 526 

Banjara tribe: living with Chenchu tribe, 
206; migration of, 206; as Scheduled 
Tribe, 206 

banking: government control of, 312- 
13; deposit insurance, 317; national- 
ized, xxxix, 316; in rural areas, 300, 
317 

Bank Nationalization Bill, 450 

banks {see also Reserve Bank of India): 
agricultural credit from, 418-19, 420; 
branches of, 317, 420-21; foreign, 
317; government loans by, 317-18; 
interest rates in, 317; lending by, 317, 
420; liquidity requirements for, 317; 
nationalized, 52, 304, 317, 450, 466; 
number of accounts, 420; postal sav- 
ings, 317; priorities in, 317; rural, 317 

Bano, Shah, 496 

Baptist Church: number of members, 
171 

Barnala, Surjit Singh, 492 
Basu, Jyoti, 226 
Battle of Buxar (1765), 29 
Battle of Panipat (1526), 20 
Battle of Panipat, Second (1556), 20 
Battle of Plassey (1757), 29 
Battle ofTalikot (1565), 19 
bauxite, 341; mines, 341; reserves, 341 
Bay of Bengal: islands in, 71 
Beas River, 68; irrigation from, 68 
Belgium: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 
319 

Belgrade Conference (1961), 558 
Benares. See Varanasi 
Benares Hindu University: science pro- 
gram, 371 
Bene Israel Jews, 174 



801 



India: A Country Study 



Bengal: bhakti tradition in, 134; British 
presidency in, 32; chemical industry 
in, 362; famine in, 391; partition of, 
39, 40 

Bengal Army, 566; disbanded, 566; orga- 
nization of, 566-67; recruitment for, 
566-67; reestablished, 567 

Bengali language, 182, 196; native speak- 
ers of, 182; publications in, 500; as 
regional language, 197 

Bentinck, William Cavendish, 34 

Bhabha, Ho mi Jehangir, 361, 372 

Bhagavad Gita, 1 37 

Bhagwan Bahubali (Gomateshvasa), 128; 
statue of, 1 28 

bhakti literature, 134-35, 139, 139-10 

Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals 
Corporation, 368-69 

Bharatiyajanata Party (BJP — Indian Peo- 
ple's Party), xlvi, 149, 223, 431, 471, 
478-82, 504-5; constituency of, 1, 472; 
in elections, 480-81, 497; and foreign 
policy, 515; formed, 175, 480; opposi- 
tion of, to Congress, 474, 477; in Par- 
liament, 471; platform of, 497; 
support for, xliii, 480-81, 497 

Bharatiyajanata Party government, 307 

Bharatiya Lok Dal (Indian People Party) : 
in Janata Party, 476; in Janata Dal, 477 

Bhatt, Ela, 291 

Bhattarai, Krishna Prasad, 530 
Bhil tribe, 202 

Bhindranwale, Santjarnail Singh, 167, 

492, 608; killed, 492 
Bhojpuri language: native speakers of, 

182 

Bhopalgas leak, 286,451 

Bhutan: aid to, 321, 514, 526, 531; bor- 
der with, 63, 71, 74, 516; membership 
of, in SAARC, 559; relations with, 509, 
530-31; relations with China, 530 

Bhutto, Benazir: as prime minister, 524; 
political campaign of, 524 

Bihar (state): agricultural growth in, 
404; caste problems in, 273; coal in, 
336; education in, 112; elections in, 
475; electricity in, 339; Hindi in, 191; 
land reform in, 390; legislature of, 
455; literacy rate in, 106; mining in, 
341; Muslims in, 155; political parties 
in, 490; political uprisings in, 483; 
political representation in, 52; poverty 



in, 301; Santals in, 168, 200; urban 
areas in, 86 

Bijapur: Mughal war with, 24 

bilingualism, 192, 198 

biotechnology: international coopera- 
tion in, 544; research organizations in, 
368-69; scientific and technical sup- 
port for, 358 

Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev (king), 
529 

Birla family, 242 

birth: pollution associated with, 236; 
rate, 82 

birth control {see also family planning): 
forced sterilization for, 54; informa- 
tion, 90; methods, 92, 254; percent of 
population using, 91 
BJP. See Bharatiyajanata Party 
Black Acts. See Rowlatt Acts 
Blanpied, William A, 360 
Board of Control: established, 33 
Bodoland Autonomous Council, 488, 
611 

Bodo People's Action Committee, 488 
Bodo Security Force, 611 
Bodo tribe, 611 

Bombay, 290; airport, 354; as British 
presidency, 29, 32; fishing in, 417; IIT 
campus in, 370; Jews in, 174; popula- 
tion of, 285; port of, 350, 351; public 
transportation in, 349, 350; stock mar- 
ket, 318; Tata Institute facility in, 376 

Bombay High oil field, 337 

Bombay Marine, 587 

Bondo tribe: language of, 202 

border problems: with Bangladesh, 71, 
73-74, 516; with China, 71, 72, 533- 
34, 535, 542, 576, 620; with Pakistan, 
46,57, 71,72,516, 524 

Border Roads Development Board, 350 

borders, 71-74; with Bangladesh, 63, 71, 
73-74; with Bhutan, 63, 71, 74, 516; 
with Burma, 71 , 74; with China, 63, 71 , 
72, 535; of Indo-Gangetic Plain, 67; 
with Indonesia, 74; with Maldives, 74, 
531; military maneuvers along, 524; 
with Nepal, 63, 71, 74, 516; with Paki- 
stan, 63, 71; in Punjab, 72 

Border Security Force, 598, 599 

Bose, Sir Jagadish Chandra (J.C.), 361- 
62 

Bose, Satyendranath (S.N.), 362 



802 



Index 



Bose, Subhas Chandra: as Congress 
leader, 43; death of, 569; in Indian 
National Army, 568 

Bose-Einstein Condensation, 362 

Bose-Einstein Statistics, 362 

boycotts of British goods, 39 

Brahma, 138, 140-41 

Brahmans (priests), xxxvii; in Aryan sys- 
tem, 7, 8; ascendancy of, 14; brides of, 
270; dharma of, 270; diets of, 236; 
education of, 110-11; neighborhoods 
of, 282; occupations of, 271, 283; ori- 
gins of, 267; political affiliation of, 
468, 472; pollution of, 236-37; purity 
of, 236-37; recitation of Vedas by, 122; 
rules for accepting food, 237-38; sta- 
tus of, 267; Tamil movement against, 
186; in villages, 282,283 

Brahmaputra River, 68, 75; etymology, 
68; source of, 75 

Brahmaputra River basin: rainfall in, 75 

Brahmo Samaj (Society of Brahma), 34 

Braj language, 191 

Brass, Paul, 463 

Brezhnev, Leonid, 543 

bribery, 1, 208, 474; efforts to end, 469; 
of police, 615; rates of, 208 

brideprice, 7 

brides: Brahman, 270; child, 23, 244, 
256, 262, 265, 291; dowry for, 7, 259, 
260-61; duties of, 262; English-speak- 
ing, 193; family situation of, 242, 257, 
258, 262; names of, 284; Sweeper, 270; 
unhappiness of, 263 

Britain: aid from, 319, 320, 370, 426, 
554; in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319; 
boycott of goods from, 39; investment 
by, 554; materiel from, 563, 588; 
motor vehicle production, 335; rela- 
tions with, 553-54; trade with, 28, 554 

British East India Company, 27-28; abol- 
ished, 36; army of, 565, 567; founded, 
28; maritime force of, 587 

British Empire, 30-46; company rule 
(1757-1857), 30-35; Raj (1858-1947), 
35-38 

British expansion, 30-32; collaboration 
with, 30; doctrine of lapse, 31-32; land 
distribution under, 33; legal system 
under, 33-34; motives of, 30; subsid- 
iary alliance system, 31; support for, 
30; territory acquired in, 31; textile 



industry under, 33 

British government: supervision by, of 
presidencies, 32 

British Indian Army, 568 

British Raj (1858-47), xxxvi, 35-38; 
administration of, 36-37, 40-41; Afri- 
cans under, 213-4; agriculture under, 
391; armed forces under, 565-69; civil 
service under, 461; currency under, 
316; dyarchy under, 40-41; economic 
planning under, 309; foreign relations 
under, 516; language of administra- 
tion under, 188; Muslim loyalty to, 39, 
40; race prejudice of, xxxvii, 36, 37, 
211; science education under, 360-61; 
scientific developments under, 360; 
tribes under, 206 

British traders, 28-29; administrative 
zones of, 29; armies of, 565; conflict 
of, with French traders, 29; factories 
of, 28, 29; military operations of, 29; 
race prejudice of, 32, 211; sepoys 
under, 29, 565,566 

Brown, Judith M., 42 

Brown, Ronald H., 323, 552 

BSR See Bahujan Samaj Party 

Buddha (see abo Gautama, Siddhartha), 
xxxvii, 130, 131; death of, 130 

Buddhism, 10, 11, 15, 128-32; art of, 
130; conversions to, 131,176, 177, 275; 
forms of, 131; Four Noble Truths of, 
129-30; and Hinduism, 130; impact 
of, 130; introduced to China, 531; 
meditation in, 129; missionaries of, 12; 
number of followers of, 119; origins 
of, 128-30; regeneration of, 130-31; 
spread of, 130; stupas of, 130; temples 
of, 15; waning of, 130 

Buddhism, Mahayana, 131 

Buddhism, Theravada, 131-32; language 
of, 186; origins of, 131 

Buddhism, Vajrayana, 131 

Buddhists: convert communities of, 132; 
education of, 132; geographic distri- 
bution of, 131; number of, 131; refu- 
gees from Tibet, 131 

budget, 313-15; agriculture in, 393; 
approval of, 313; emergency, 315; pro- 
posals, 313; of state governments, 
313-14 

budget deficit, 316; as percentage of 
gross domestic product, 31 2 



803 



India: A Country Study 



Bulganin, Nikolai, 541 

bureaucracy (see also Indian Administra- 
tive Service): corruption in, 306; of 
Mughals, 24 

Burma: border with, 71, 74; materiel 
acquired by, 535; refugees from, 85; 
relations with, 509 

Burmah Oil Company, 337 

Bush, George, 548 

business, 300; credit, 317; energy con- 
sumed by, 339; English as language of, 
193; fictive kinship in, 235; govern- 
ment aversion to large, 305; hierarchy 
in, 235; licensing for, 305 

business class, 278 

Butcher (Khatik) caste: status of, 237, 
267 



cabinet: committees of, 579, 581; morn- 
ing military meetings in, 581; Rajiv 
Gandhi's reshuffling of, 448-49; sci- 
ence portfolios in, 363-65 

Cable News Network (CNN) , 357; cover- 
age of Persian Gulf War, 502 

Calcutta, 290; airport, 354; as British 
presidency, 29; as British capital, 39, 
40; fishing in, 417; Jews in, 174; popu- 
lation of, 285; port of, 350; public 
transportation in, 350; shipyards in, 
352; subway system of, 289, 346-49; 
tramway in, 349 

calendars, 153-54, 158; reform of, 360 

Cambodia: peacekeeping missions in, 
556, 579; relations with, 537 

Canada: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319 

Cannanore Islands, 71 

capital city: Calcutta as, 39, 40; New 
Delhi as, 40 

Carey, William, 32 

Cariappa, K.M., 595 

Carter, Jimmy, 547 

Carter Doctrine, 548 

caste (see also varna; Scheduled Castes; 
see also under individual castes), 266—76; 
attempts to reform, 50, 162, 266; cate- 
gories of, 268; changing the system, 
xxxviii, xlii, 273-76; and class, 276; 
council (panchayat), 270; defined, 266; 
dharma of, 270; discrimination based 
on, xxxviii, 266, 271; etymology of, 
267; excommunication from, 270; 



geographic distribution of, 268; 
improving, 271-72; and karma, 271; 
and landownership, 273; and lan- 
guage, 183-84; legal rights of, 274; 
and occupation, 263, 267, 271; origins 
of, xxxvii; pervasiveness of, 234, 238- 
39; political affiliation and, 488-91; 
political influence of, 276, 481, 505; 
and pollution, 235-40, 268-69, 270; 
and purity, 235-40, 268-69; rankings 
of, 234, 267, 268-69, 271; relations, 
272-73; roles in, 263; and tribe, 201, 
268; and urbanization, 275 
castes, cultivator: education of, 111 
Catholicism, Roman: missionaries, 170 
Catholic missions. See missions 
Catholics, Roman: number of, 170 
cement industry, xxxix; price controls 

on, 305 
census of 1991, 81, 85, 325 
Central Asia: cultural exchanges with, 
540; Islam in, 16; relations with, 510, 
540-41 

Central Bureau of Investigation, 613 
Central Council of Health and Family 

Welfare, 100 
Central Drug Research Institute, 369 
Central Electrochemical Research Insti- 
tute, 372 

Central Electronics Engineering Insti- 
tute, 372 

Central Fisheries Corporation, 417 
Central Glass and Ceramic Research 

Institute, 372 
Central Gurdwara Management Com- 
mittee, 166, 167 
Central Highlands, 64, 67; agriculture 

in, 385; urbanization in, 86 
Central Industrial Security Force, 598 
Central Inland Fisheries Institute, 416 
Central Institute for Fishery Education, 
417 

Central Institute of Agricultural Engi- 
neering, 402 

Central Institute of Coastal Engineering 
for Fisheries, 418 

Central Institute of Fisheries Nautical 
and Engineering Training, 418 

Central Institute of Fisheries Technol- 
ogy, 416 

Central Institute of Marine Fisheries 
Research, 416 



804 



Index 



Central Leather Research Institute, 372 

Central Public Service, 461 

Central Reserve Police Force, 598, 599- 
600; founded, 599; missions of, 599- 
600; women in, 600 

Central Warehousing Corporation, 423 

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biol- 
ogy, 369 

Centre for Development of Advanced 
Computing, 367 

Centre for Scientific and Industrial Con- 
sultancy, 370 

Centre of Indian Trade Unions, 327 

Chaimal tribe: population of, 200 

Chaitanya, 134-35, 138 

Challenge of Education: A Policy Perspective, 
106 

Chalukya Kingdom (556-757), 14 
Chamar caste. See Leather worker caste 
Champakalakshmi, Radha, 14 
Chandigarh: airport, 354; teachers in, 

107 
Chandra, 121 

Chandragupta I (319-335), 13 
Chandragupta II (376-415), 13 
Chandragupta Maurya (324-301 B.C.), 9 
Charaka, 13 
Charter Act (1813), 33 
chemicals: imported, 322; research on, 
372 

chemicals industry, 362; government 
control of, xxxix, 330; price controls 
on, 305 

Chenab River, 68 

Chenchu tribe: Banjaras in, 206; Dalits 

in, 206; economy of, 205-6 
Chera Kingdom, 12 
Chernomyrdin, Viktor, 545 
Chi Haotian, 536 

children, 252-56; employment of, 105-6, 
112, 255, 325; family roles of, 255; 
importance of male, 92-93, 253; initia- 
tion ceremonies for, 146-47, 172, 256; 
marriage of, 23, 244, 256, 291; mortal- 
ity of, 93, 94, 264; neglect of female, 
252, 253; prostitution by, 291; school 
enrollment of, 64, 255, 289; treatment 
of, 252, 254 

China: border agreement with, 535; bor- 
der with, 63, 71, 72, 533-34, 542, 576, 
620; Buddhism introduced to, 531; 
Rajiv Gandhi's visit to, 534; imports 



from, 341; influence of, in Southeast 
Asia, 537; international competition 
of, 519, 547; materiel supplied to 
Burma by, 535; materiel supplied to 
Nepal by, 529-30; occupation by, of 
Aksai Chin, 520, 532-33, 574; relations 
of, with Bhutan, 530; relations of, with 
Pakistan, 517, 533, 539; territorial 
claims of, 574; as threat, 515, 517, 537, 
543,574; war with (1962), xlvii, 51, 73, 
299, 310, 510, 542, 563, 574-76, 581 

China-India relations, 509, 510, 517, 
531-36; conflict with, over Tibet, 531- 
34; cooperation with, 534 

China, Republic of (Taiwan): relations 
with, 536 

Chipko Movement, 415 

Chishti, Muinuddin, 160 

Chola Kingdom, 12 

ChotaNagpur Plateau, 70 

Chotanagpur tribe, 218 

Christian churches: language of, 1 70 

Christianity (see also under individual 
denominations), 169-71; conversion to, 
169, 170, 176-77, 219, 275; sects of, 
169-70 

Christian missions. Seg missions; mission- 
aries 

Christians: and caste, 235; literacy rate 
of, 244 

Church of North India: number of mem- 
bers of, 170-71 

Church of South India, 170; number of 
members of, 1 70 

Cilappatikaram (The Jewelled Anklet), 15 

Citibank, 317 

civil aviation, 306, 342, 352-54; coopera- 
tion with China, 534 

Civil Defence Volunteers, 601 

civil disobedience. See satyagraha 

civil-military relations, 579-81 

civil rights: suspended, 54, 606 

civil servants, 278; corruption of, 462; 
examinations for, 461; training of, 461 

civil service. See Indian Administrative 
Service 

clans, 244; hierarchy of, 244 

class, 276-79, 292; and caste, 276; in cit- 
ies, 278; distinctions, 233; formation 
of, 277; menial underclass, 278 

Classical Age, 12-15 

climate, 76-81; characteristics of, 76; 



805 



India: A Country Study 



northeast monsoon, 77, 385, 397; of 
offshore islands, 71; rainfall, 68, 71, 
75, 77, 78, 384; regions of, 78; seasons, 
76; southwest monsoon, 76-77, 384, 
385, 397; temperature, 78-81 

Clinton, Hilary Rodham, 552 

Clinton, William J., 552 

Clive, Robert, 29 

CNN. See Cable News Network 

coal, 335, 336; demand for, 336; earnings 
from, 331; government control of, 
330; in Jharkand, 219; mines, 336; 
price controls on, 305; production, 
336; reserves, 336 

Coal India Limited, 336 

coastal plain, 71 

Coast Guard Organisation, 598-99; 
founded, 598; materiel of, 599; mis- 
sions of, 598-99; structure of, 599 

coastline, 71 

Cochin. SeeKochi 

Cochin Shipyards, 352 

Code of Criminal Procedure (1973), 
615, 617, 618 

Cold War, xlvii-xlviii; end of, 510-11; 
change in balance of power following, 
510-11,518-19 

College of Combat, 587 

Colombo Plan for Cooperative Eco- 
nomic and Social Development in 
Asia and the Pacific, 427, 557 

Commission for Agricultural Costs and 
Prices, 403, 422 

commoner caste. See Vaishya caste 

Commonwealth of Nations, 553-54 

Commonwealth of Nations Assistance 
Program, 427, 556-57 

communications. See telecommunica- 
tions 

communist parties, xlii, xliv, 474, 482-84; 

and foreign policy, 515 
Communist Party of India (CPI), 44, 

222, 466; in Andhra Pradesh, 215, 218; 

in elections of 1995, 227; founded, 

482; opposition of, to Congress, 474; 

support for, 484; in Tripura, 227 
Communist Party of India (Marxist): 

founded, 482; support for, 483-84 
Communist Party of India 

(Marxist-Leninist), 484; founded, 483 
communists: in Congress, 482 
Community Development Programme, 



396; phased out, 397 
Compagnie des Indes Orientales. See 

French East India Company 
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, lii 
computer industry: investment in, 57 
computers: development of, xxxix, 367- 

68, 376; international cooperation in, 

544, 551 

Congo: peacekeeping missions in, 556, 
579 

Congregational Church, 170 
Congress for Democracy: in Janata Party, 
476 

Congress-League Scheme of Reforms 

(Lucknow Pact), 40 
Congress party (Indian National Con- 
gress), li, 463-74; boycotts led by, 39, 
110; under British rule, 509; commu- 
nists in, 482; constitution drafted by, 
44; decline of, xlii, 432, 466; and edu- 
cation, 110; in elections of 1937, 45; in 
elections of 1967, 466; in elections of 
1991, 472; in elections of 1995, 227; 
factions, 52, 466; foreign department, 
509; foreign policy of, 509; friction in, 
43; under Mohandas Gandhi, xli, 42; 
goals of, 38-39; in independence 
movement, xlvi, 465; leaders of, 4; 
opposition to, 474; origins of, xli, 38- 
39; patronage in, 465-66; pragmatism 
of, 465; relations of, with Muslim 
League, xlvi, 40, 44; reorganized, 42; 
role of, 463; RSS members in, 479; 
structure of, 465, 473; support for, xlii, 
463-65; and World War II, 45 
Congress (I) party: constituency of, 1, 
463, 468; corruption in, xlii, 431; 
decline of, 431, 462, 504; defections 
from, 471, 472, 475; dissidents in, 474, 
475; in elections of 1980, 468; in elec- 
tions of 1981, 55; and foreign policy, 
515; formed, 468; in local govern- 
ments, 487, 494, 522; in Parliament, 
471; reform of, 56; scandals in, 504 
Congress (O) party, 52, 466; in Janata 

Party, 476 
Congress (R) party, 52, 466 
Congress Working Committee, 473 
Constituent Assembly, 433 
constitution, Congress (1929), 44 
constitution of 1951, 432-41; affirmative 
action under, 436, 437-38; amend- 



806 



Index 



ments to, xliv, 434, 450; authoritarian 
powers under, 433, 438-41; caste 
under, 266, 271, 273, 434, 435, 438; 
Concurrent List, 445-46; Directive 
Principles of State Policy, 434, 435-36; 
discrimination prohibited under, 434; 
drafted, 433; education under, 435; 
environment under, 436; equality 
under, 273; Fundamental Duties, 436; 
Fundamental Rights, 433, 434-35, 
438, 450, 452; group rights under, 
436-38; languages under, 182, 195; 
law and order under, 612; legal aid 
under, 435; limits on rights under, 
435, 438; military justice under, 604; 
minorities under, 435; panchayats 
under, 460; parliamentary pattern of, 
433; police under, 612; power distribu- 
tion under, 433-34, 435-36, 445-46; 
President's Rule under, 438; promul- 
gated, 433; schedules in, 182, 434, 
435; social welfare in, 432-33, 436; 
State List, 445, 457; State of Emer- 
gency under, 438-41; Supreme Court, 
433; tribes under, 435, 438; Union 
List, 445; work under, 435; workers 
under, 435 
construction, 335; employment in, 335; 
of housing, 302, 335; as percentage of 
gross domestic product, 300, 335; per- 
centage of work force in, 325; workers, 
288, 301 

consumer goods: manufacture of, 304; 
and middle class, xl, xli, 278, 301-2; 
production of, 307 

consumerism, 306 

Continental Aviation, 354 

Cornwallis, Charles, 33 

Coromandel Coast, 64; climate of, 78 

corruption: attack on, 469-70; in civil 
service, 462; in Congress (I), 431; in 
elections, 498; in government, 470; 
under Mughals, 23; in police force, 
615; of politicians, 1, 432, 433 

Costa Rica: peacekeeping forces in, 579 

cotton, 385, 409-10; cultivation of, 298; 
export of, 381, 410, 425; foreign 
exchange earned from, 410; market- 
ing of, 422; price controls on, 305; 
prices, 404; production of, 410; 
research on, 368; shortages of, 303; 
textiles, 4, 297, 305,331,409 



Cotton Corporation of India, 422 
Council of Ministers, 443, 448; powers 
of, 448 

Council of Scientific and Industrial 
Research (CSIR), 364, 365, 369, 371- 
72 

Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare 

School, 587 
courts, high, 452, 618; judges of, 452; 

jurisdiction of, 452, 618 
courts, lower, 452-54, 618; civil cases in, 

452; criminal cases in, 452; judges of, 

452-53, 618 
courts, military, 604-5 
courts, sharia: judges from, in British 

legal system, 33 
courts-martial, 604 

court system: under British, 33; social 
action litigation in, 453-54 

CPI. See Communist Party of India. 

credit: agriculture, 317; business, 317; 
industrial, 317; subsidies, 317 

crime: capital punishment for, 440; cate- 
gories of, 616-17; ineffectiveness of 
police against, 432 

criminal justice system {see also judiciary; 
see also under courts), 615—20; death 
sentences, 617; procedure in, 615-18; 
punishment in, 617; rights of accused 
in, 617 

criminal law, 615-18 

CSIR. See Council of Scientific and 

Industrial Research 
cultivators. See agricultural workers; 

farmers 

currency: under British rule, 316; circu- 
lation of, 316; convertibility of, 306, 
323-24; devaluation of, 52, 299, 306, 
310,466 

Curzon, Sir George, 39 

customs service: employment in, 212 

Cyprus: peacekeeping missions in, 556 

Dadra and Nagar Haveli: rural popula- 
tion of, 88; Scheduled Tribes in, 88 

Dainik Jagran, 500 

Dalai Lama, 131, 532 

Dalhousie, Marquess of. See Ramsay, 
James Andrew Brown 

Dalit Panthers, 276, 504 

Dalits ("untouchables") (see also Sched- 



807 



India: A Country Study 



uled Castes), 267; affirmative action 
for, xxxviii, 274; atrocities committed 
against, 273; conversion of, to Bud- 
dhism, 131, 275; conversion of, to 
Christianity, 171, 275; conversion of, 
to Islam, 177; dharma of, 270; discrim- 
ination against, xxxviii, 271, 273, 274, 
619; language use of, 198; literacy of, 
274; living in Chenchu tribe, 206; 
neighborhoods of, 282; origins of, 
267-68; as percentage of population, 
490; political activities of, 431, 432; 
political affiliation of, 463, 490; politi- 
cal agitation by, 276, 490; pollution of, 
269-70; in prison, 619; reforms 
regarding, 43; in rural areas, 275; stu- 
dents, 274 

Daman and Diu: Africans in, 214; urban- 
ization in, 86 

Damania Airways, 354 

dams, 75, 76, 340; injharkand, 220 

Darjeeling. See Darjiling 

Darjiling, 69; electricity in, 340; Gorkhas 
in, 223; language in, 224; regional 
autonomy for, 224; tea plantations in, 
384 

Dayananda, Swami, 174 

death, 264-66; and afterlife, 266; by 
assassination, 49, 55, 58, 463, 469, 472, 
479, 492, 494; ceremonies, 147-48, 
172; dowry murders, 261, 291; in elec- 
tions, 454, 455, 463; by infanticide, 93, 
252, 253; by lynching, 273; by massa- 
cre, 41, 46, 273; mourning for, 264; 
murders, 493; pollution following, 
148, 236, 264; rate, 82, 93, 94; in riots, 
222-23, 274-75, 477, 492, 497; from 
road accidents, 286; by sati, 7, 23, 33, 
291; by suicide, 7, 261,291 

debt. See foreign debt 

Deccan Plateau, 64, 70; agriculture in, 
385; climate of, 78; coastal plain of, 71; 
elevation of, 70; etymology, 70; popu- 
lation density in, 87; rivers of, 70 

Defence Coordination and Implementa- 
tion Committee, 581 

Defence of India Act, 439 

Defence of India Bill (1939), 568 

Defence of India Rules, 439; politicians 
arrested under, 439; repealed, 440 

Defence Planning Staff, 581 

Defence Research and Development 



Organisation (DRDO), 369, 584; 
Advanced Numerical Research and 
Analysis Group, 367-68; computer 
development in, 367-68; funding for, 
365 

Defence Security Force, 598, 599 
Defence Services Staff College, 587, 591 
defense industry, domestic, xlvii, 542, 
563, 580; desire to develop, 304; gov- 
ernment control of, 304, 329-30; 
impact of partition on, 569-70; 
research organizations, 369 
defense spending, 300, 581-83; budget, 
583; and foreign aid, 517-18; under 
Nehru, 563; as percentage of gross 
national product, 581; on Siachen Gla- 
cier dispute, 522 
Delhi, 23; airport, 354; population of, 
285 

Delhi, National Capital Area of {see also 
New Delhi), 290, 458; dowry murders 
in, 261; Hindi in, 191; public transpor- 
tation in, 349, 350 

Delhi Sultanate: agriculture under, 17; 
dynasties of, 16; expansion of, 16-17; 
government of, 16-17; invasion of, 20; 
Islam in, 16; taxes in, 16, 17; trade in, 
16; transportation in, 16 

Delhi University: science program, 371 

demonstrations. See political demonstra- 
tions 

Denmark: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 

319; traders from, 30, 211 
Department of Atomic Energy, 340, 373, 

376 

Department of Posts and Telegraphs: 

finances of, 314 
Department of Space, 373, 374 
Department of Telecommunications, 

355 

Desai, Morarji, 52; in elections of 1977, 
54; foreign policy under, 515; in 
Janata government, 476-77; personal 
advisers to, 512; President's Rule 
invoked by, 439; as prime minister, 54- 
55, 512, 548; resignation of, 55 

Deve Gowda, Haradanahalli (H.D.), li 

Devi, Phoolan, 1 

dharma, 7, 252; and caste, 270; in Maha- 

bharata, 9 
diamond processing, 322 
Dibrugarh: rainfall in, 75 



808 



Index 



Diego Garcia: United States naval pres- 
ence on, xlviii, 517, 547, 551 

diet (see also food): calories per day, 94; 
and malnutrition, 94, 96 

Din-i-Ilahi, 23 

Dipavali (Diwali) festival, 23, 142, 154, 
284 

Direct Action Day (August 16, 1946), 46 
Directive Principles of State Policy, 434 
Directorate General of All India Radio 

(Akashvani) , 356 
Discovery of India (Nehru), 358 
divorce, 270; by women, 50 
Diwali. See Dipavali 
DK. See Dravida Kazhagam 
DMK. See Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 
doctrine of lapse, 31-32; renounced, 37 
Doordarshan (TV1), 356-57, 501, 503 
dowry, 7, 259, 260-61; declared illegal, 

50, 261; murders, 261,291 
drainage, 74; in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 67- 

68 

Dravida Kazhagam (DK — Dravidian Fed- 
eration), 485 

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK — 
Dravidian Progressive Federation), 
466; founded, 485; in National Front, 
477 

Dravidian culture: social order of, 12 

Dravidian languages (see also under indi- 
vidual languages), 15, 181, 186; litera- 
ture in, 15; speakers of, 186 

Dravidian Federation. See Dravida 
Kazhagam 

Dravidian Progressive Federation. See 
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam 

DRDO. See Defence Research and Devel- 
opment Organisation drought, 397; in 
Indo-Gangetic Plain, 384; in 1965, 
299, 310; in 1966, 299, 310; in 1971, 
299, 467; in 1972, 299, 467; in 1987, 
315, 381; in Orissa, 75; prevention, 76 

Drought-Prone Areas Programme, 394 

drug trafficking: SAARC program for, 
559 

drugs. See pharmaceuticals 

Dubey, Suman, 278 

Dupleix, Franois, 29 

Durga, 139-40, 142-43 

Durga Puja festival, 284, 290 

Dussehra festival, 136, 153-54 

Dwaraka: Hindu seat of learning at, 132 



Dyer, Reginald E.H., 41 

earthquakes, 81, 396; in 1905, 81; in 

1950, 81; in 1991, 81; in 1993, 81 
East Coast, 64; climate of, 78 
Eastern Ghats, 70; climate of, 78 
East India Company. See British East 

India Company; French East India 

Company 
East West Airlines, 354 
economic crisis: of 1971, 53-54; of 1990, 

324 

economic development, xxxix; aid for, 
320; foreign investment in, 318; and 
population growth, 90; spending on, 
311 

economic growth, 298-99; under 

five-year plans, 31 1 
economic infrastructure: under five-year 

plans, 310 

economic liberalization, xxxix, 297-98, 
299, 302-3; and agriculture, 427-28; 
and newspapers, 501; opposition to, 
302-3 

economic planning (see also under individ- 
ual plans), 309-12; annual plans, 310; 
under British rule, 309; grants to 
states through, 457; under Nehru, 49 

economic policy: developments, 304-7; 
pressures on, 306 

economic reform: under Rajiv Gandhi, 
56, 306 

economy, 300; agriculture in, 428; for- 
estry in, 414; under Rajiv Gandhi, 56; 
government role in, 49, 298; problems 
in, 49; tribal, 202-9; underground, 

306 

economy, informal, 300; as percentage 

of gross domestic product, 300 
Eden, George, 31 

education (see also schools), 103-15, 255; 
access to, 111, 216; administration of, 
103-5; adult, 64, 113; in agriculture, 
391 , 393, 394-96; under British, xxxix, 
34, 391; of Buddhists, 132; and caste, 
111; under constitution, 435; distance, 
111; funding for, 1 04, 1 05; of girls, 
113; government responsibility for, 
104; in Gupta Empire, 13; higher, 103, 
108-110, 209, 395; historical elitism 
in, 110-11; impact of, 285; improve- 



809 



India: A Country Study 



ments in, 64, 106-7; of Jains, 128; lan- 
guages of instruction in, 34, 108, 184, 
193-94, 195, 207, 212; of linguistic 
minorities, 184, 195; in mathematics, 
361; middle, 103; of middle class, xl, 
107; of Muslims, 39; nonformal, 64, 
112, 113; as percentage of gross 
national product, 105; policy, 104; pri- 
mary, 103, 105-8; programs, 104—5; in 
rural areas, 104-5, 285, 308; in sci- 
ence, 361, 369-70, 372; secondary, 
103, 105-8; and society, 110; in tech- 
nology, 361, 369-70; of tribal people, 
207-9; in urban areas, 104-5; of 
women, 113 

educational development, 222 

EEC. See European Economic Commu- 
nity 

Egypt: relations with, 538 

Einstein, Albert, 362 

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 546 

Ekta Yatra (Unity Pilgrimage) , 494 

Election Commission, 454-55; assertive- 

ness of, 433; functions of, 462 
election laws, 454-55; enforcement of, 

454-55 

elections {see also voting), 462-63; cor- 
ruption in, 498; killings in, 454, 455, 
463; of 1937, 45; of 1952, 215; of 1967, 

52, 466, 475; of 1969, 446; of 1 971 , 52- 

53, 467; of 1972, 467; of 1977, 54, 476; 
of 1981, 55; of 1983, 217; of 1989, 58, 
470-71; of 1991, 472, 473, 478, 480- 
81, 497; of 1992, 486; of 1993, 481; of 
1995, 227; of 1996, 1; panchayat, 225- 
26; parliamentary, 443, 470; violence 
in, 454 

electric power (see also energy), 339-40; 
capacity, 339; consumption of, 339; 
under five-year plans, 309, 310; gener- 
ation, 300, 307, 309, 339; hydro, 76, 
222, 339, 340; investment in, 299, 312; 
nuclear, 339, 373; in rural areas, 339; 
shortages, 286, 339, 340; thermal, 339; 
transmission, 339; in urban areas, 340 

electronics industry, xxxix, 332; employ- 
ment in, 376; growth of, 332; invest- 
ment in, 57; research in, 372, 373 

elite class, xxxvii, xl; backlash by, 620; 
conspicuous consumption by, 306; 
employment in, 251; Parsis as, 171, 
172; as percentage of population, xl, 



279; political affiliation of, 463, 481; 
political activities of, 495; and pollu- 
tion and purity practices, 239^10; pop- 
ulation of, 301; women, 251 

Elliot, Gilbert John, 39 

El Salvador: peacekeeping forces in, 579 

EL TV, 357 

employment: affirmative action in, 302; 
in agriculture, 297, 381, 392; of 
Anglo-Indians, 212, 213; of children, 
105-6, 112, 255, 325; in cities, 288; of 
college graduates, 109; in construc- 
tion, 335; in electronics industry, 376; 
in fishing, 297, 416; under five-year 
plans, 311; in forestry, 297; and job 
creation, 76, 306, 328; of people with 
technical training, 592; of poor peo- 
ple, 308; in private sector, 325; in pub- 
lic sector, 302, 325; in railroads, 212, 
345; requirements, 329; in rural areas, 
311; in textiles industry, 331; of 
women, 251 

energy (see also electricity; see also under 
individual energy sources), 335—41; com- 
mercial, 335, 336; consumption, 335; 
under five-year plans, 311; govern- 
ment control of, 330; investment in, 
306; noncommercial, 335-36; 
nuclear, 300; production, 335; sources 
of, 335 

English, 187-88, 192-94; broadcasts in, 
356; knowledge of, 192, 198; as lan- 
guage of instruction, 34, 194-94, 207, 
212; as official language, 182, 183, 
187-88, 195; publications in, 194, 499, 
500; teaching of, 193, 194 

Enron Corporation, 307 

environment: under constitution, 436; 
and forestry, 414; as political issue, 
503, 504; protection programs, 320, 
414; quality of, 76 

environmental problems: motor vehicle 
emissions, 350; radiation leaks, 340; 
scientific and technical support for, 
358 

Essential Commodities Act (1955), 304- 
5 

Essential Services Maintenance Act 

(1981), 440 
Eternal Party. SeeAkali Dal 
ethnic diversity, 233 
ethnic minorities, 199-214 



810 



Index 



European Economic Community (EEC): 
aid from, 426; impact of single market 
of, 513; relations with, 554-55 

European Space Agency, 375 

European Union: aid from, 426; trade 
with, 322 

exchange rate, 323-24; floating, 324 
exclusive economic zone, 416 
executions, 617 

executive branch, 446-49; president in, 
446-48; prime minister, 448-49; vice 
president, 448 

exports (see also under individual products) , 
321; of agricultural products, 381, 393, 
424-26; of aluminum, 332; of cotton, 
381, 410, 424, 425; earnings, 323; of 
fish, 416, 417, 418, 425; of gems and 
jewelry, 322; government control of, 
297, 305; growth of, 305, 324; imports 
financed by, 322; of iron, 341; of jute, 
381, 410, 424; of milk, 412; of motor 
vehicles, 335; of oilseeds, 382; as per- 
centage of gross domestic product, 
321; policies on, 427; promotion of, 
310; of rice, 425; of tea, 425-26; of tex- 
tiles, 322, 331,381 

Express News Service, 500 



families (see also kinship), 241-66; in 
Aryan system, 7; authority in, 247-48; 
cooperation in, 245, 247-48, 254; in 
life-cycle observances, 245; genealogy 
of, 245; hierarchy in, 235, 247, 254-55; 
ideals of, 241-43; landless, 388; matri- 
lineal, 243-44; nuclear, 242; patrilin- 
eal, 241-12; purdah in, 249-50; sibling 
bonds in, 255; size of, 64; tribal, 209; 
urban, 289; and worship, 245 

families, joint, 241-42, 242-43; and agri- 
culture, 242; cooperation in, 263; divi- 
sion of, 243; in urban areas, 242 

family planning (see also birth control) , 
64, 254; community activities for, 92; 
percentage of couples using, 92, 254; 
policy, 89-93; programs, 90, 91-92, 
102,559 

family structure, 243-44; fraternal poly- 
andry, 243; of hijras, 281; of Khasis, 
243-44; of Murias, 258-59; of Nayars, 
244; polygyny, 243, 291 

FAO. See United Nations Food and Agri- 



culture Organization 

Farakka Barrage, 526 

farmers: armed rebellion of, 214; and 
caste, 267; debt of, 423; forestry 
projects of, 414; as percentage of work 
force, 325; political activities of, 504; 
poverty of, 301; price supports for, 
381; status of, 267, 279; technology 
for, 402 

farming, 300; dairy, 389, 412, 426; fish, 
416, 417, 426; swidden, 201-2, 203; by 
tribes, 201-2 

farms: size of, 386 

Farrukh-Siyar ( 1 71 3-1 9) , 28 

Fatehpur Sikri, 21 

Fatima, 156 

Federal Republic of Germany. See Ger- 
many, Federal Republic of 

Federation of Cooperative Sugar Facto- 
ries, 422 

Federation of Indian Chambers of Com- 
merce International, 515 

fertility: rate, 93, 254; research, 368 

fertilizer, xxxviii, 332, 400-1; consump- 
tion of, 400; government control of, 
330; import of, 322; price controls on, 
305; production of, 332; subsidies for, 
400-1 , 427 

finance, 312-18; budget, 313-15; as per- 
centage of gross domestic product, 
300 

fish: exports of, 416, 417, 418, 425; farm- 
ing, 416, 417, 426; production, 415- 
16, 417, 418; seed, 417; varieties of, 
416 

fishing, 300, 415-18; education, 394, 
395, 417; employment in, 297, 416; 
fleet, 416, 417; marketing coopera- 
tives, 418; as percentage of gross 
domestic product, 297, 299-300; per- 
centage of work force in, 325; 
research, 394, 395, 416; subsidies for, 
417-18 

Five-Year Plan, First (1951-55), 309 
Five- Year Plan, Second (1956-60), 309- 
10 

Five-Year Plan, Third (1961-65), 310 
Five-Year Plan, Fourth (1969-73), 310- 

11; agriculture under, 393 
Five-Year Plan, Fifth (1974-78), 311; 

agriculture under, 393, 394; health 

care under, 100-1 



811 



India: A Country Study 



Five- Year Plan, Sixth (1980-84), 311; 
agriculture under, 393, 397; health 
care under, 100-1 

Five-Year Plan, Seventh (1985-89), 311; 
agriculture under, 394; family plan- 
ning projects under, 90; health care 
under, 101 

Five-Year Plan, Eighth (1992-96), 311- 
12; agriculture under, 393, 402; coal 
production under, 336; exports under, 
418; health care under, 101; 
market-based targets in, 312; popula- 
tion estimate in, 81; states under, 314; 
telecommunications under, 342; tour- 
ism under, 357; transportation under, 
342, 345-46 

floods, 74; control of, 76, 393; in Orissa, 
75 

food (see also diet): aid, 320, 551; avail- 
ability of, 382; distribution of, 391; 
income spent on, 307; prices, 307, 
310, 403, 424, 467; production, 49; 
and ritual pollution, 237-38, 269; and 
ritual purity, 237-38, 269; 
self-sufficiency in, 49, 307; shortages, 
51, 392,403; work for, 308 
Food Corporation of India, 422; estab- 
lished, 424; food-grain procurement 
by, 424; marketing by, 424 
Food for Peace Program, 403 
Food for Work Programme, 308 
food grains (see also grain; Green Revolu- 
tion): area sown in, 407, 411; availabil- 
ity of, 300; buffer stocks, 392-93; 
distribution of, 424; growth rate, 381- 
82; imports, 393; marketing of, 422, 
423; price controls on, 305; produc- 
tion, 381, 391, 393, 407-9, 411; 
self-sufficiency in, 310, 381, 392-93, 
403,410 

Ford Foundation, 426; support for agri- 
culture, 397 

foreign assistance, 312, 318-21; to Afri- 
can countries, 513; for agriculture, 
426-27; amount of, 319, 320; from 
Austria, 319; and balance of payments, 
323; to Bangladesh, 321, 526; from 
Belgium, 319; to Bhutan, 321, 514, 
526, 531; from Britain, 319, 320, 370, 
426, 554; from Canada, 319; coordina- 
tion of, 513; and defense spending, 
517-18; from Denmark, 319; from 



European Economic Community, 426; 
from European Union, 426; from 
Food and Agriculture Organization 
of the United Nations, 426; from Ford 
Foundation, 426; from France, 319; 
from Germany, 319, 320, 370; from 
Italy, 319; from Japan, 319, 320, 426; 
to Maldives, 526, 531; to Nepal, 321, 
526; from Netherlands, 319; from 
Norway, 319; from Rockefeller Foun- 
dation, 426; from Soviet Union, 320, 
370, 426, 510, 542; to Sri Lanka, 526, 
548; from Sweden, 319; from United 
States, 319, 320, 426, 547, 550; to Viet- 
nam, 321; from World Bank, 426 
foreign borrowing, 302, 316; to finance 
development, 297, 299, 320; from IMF, 
54, 324; from Germany, 324; from 
Japan, 320, 324; from United Nations 
Development Programme, 426; from 
United States, 324; from World Bank, 
324 

foreign currency reserves, 324-25 
foreign debt, 312, 316, 324-25; crisis, 

551; reliance on, 306; sources of, 324 
foreign economic relations, 318-25, 513 
foreign exchange, xxxix, 323-24; earn- 
ings from cotton, 410; earnings from 
tourism, 357, 358; evasion scandal, 56; 
government control of, 304, 305, 321, 
323; liberalization of, 306; shortage, 
425 

Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 323 

foreign investment (see also investment): 
backlash against, 307; from Britain, 
554; cooperation with ASEAN, 323; 
for economic development, 318; pol- 
icy, 323, 513; from United States, 322- 
23, 546, 549 

foreign policy: formulation of, 511-15; 
and military policy, 517; under Minis- 
try of External Affairs, 512; under 
Nehru, 51; role of Parliament in, 514; 
role of prime minister in, 511 

foreign relations: with Afghanistan, 541; 
with Australia, 555; with Bangladesh, 
509, 526, 543; with Bhutan, 509, 530- 
31; with Britain, 553-54; under Brit- 
ish, 516; buffer states and, 516; with 
Burma, 509; with Cambodia, 537; with 
Central Asia, 510, 540-41; with China, 
51, 509, 510, 517, 531-36; determi- 



812 



Index 



nants of, 516-19; with Egypt, 538; with 
European Economic Community, 
554-55; with France, 555; with Ger- 
many, 554-55; interest groups con- 
cerned with, 515; with Iran, 538, 540; 
with Iraq, 538; with Israel, 539; with 
Japan, 554-55; with Laos, 537; with 
Nepal, 509, 510, 528-30; nonalign- 
ment in, 509; with Pakistan, 51, 56, 

509, 510, 511, 517, 519-25, 542; with 
Portugal, 542; reputation in, 509-10; 
with Russia, 541, 544-46; with Saudi 
Arabia, 538; security perceptions in, 
516-18; with South Africa, 519; with 
Soviet Union, 51, 510; with Sri Lanka, 
56, 57, 509, 510, 526-28; with Taiwan, 
536; with United States, xlvii, 51, 320, 

510, 517, 546-53; with Vietnam, 537 
Foreign Service Training Institute, 512 
Forest Conservation Act of 1980, 414 
forestry, 300, 413-15; development strat- 
egy, 414; employment in, 297; policy, 
220; reforestation schemes in, 413; as 
percentage of gross domestic product, 
297, 299-300; percentage of work 
force in, 325; research, 395; social, 
415, 426; support for, 426 

forests, xxxv; conservation of, 413, 414— 
15; destruction of, xxxv, 208, 413-14; 
exploitation of, 413; geographic distri- 
bution of, 413; in Jharkand, 220; land 
area of, 413; regeneration of, 413; 
reserve policies, 207, 227 

Four Noble Truths, 129-30 

France: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319; 
materiel from, 563; motor vehicle pro- 
duction, 335; relations with, 555; 
space program of, 375 

Free Kashmir. &tfAzad Kashmir 

French East India Company (Compag- 
nie des Indes Orientales), 28, 565; 
founded, 28 

French traders, 28, 30; conflict of, with 
British traders, 29; racial prejudice of, 
211; scientific developments under, 
360 

funerals: and caste, 268-69; Hindu, 147- 

48; Zoroastrian, 172 
Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph von, 204, 

208 



Gama, Vasco da, 27 

Ganapati, 140 

Gandhara Kingdom, 8 

Gandhi, Indira: assassination of, xlv, 55, 
469, 492, 608-10; in elections, 55, 467, 
468; foreign relations under, 520, 523, 
527, 547, 548; intolerance of criticism, 
53; land reform under, 52; nationaliza- 
tions under, 52, 466; no-confidence 
vote against, 54; Office of the Prime 
Minister under, 448; opposition to, 
468; personal advisers to, 511; Presi- 
dent's Rule invoked by, xliv, 439; as 
prime minister, xxxix, xlii, 52-55, 445, 
468-69; and regionalist movements, 
217; rise of, 51-52; State of Emergency 
under, xliv, 54, 439, 467-68; talks of, 
with Zia, 520, 523 

Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 
(Mahatma), xli-xlii, 41-45, 177, 569; 
arrested, 42, 45; ashram of, 42; assassi- 
nated, 49, 479; background of, 41; 
education of, 41 ; government plan of, 
433; imprisoned, 42; newspaper of, 42; 
reforms of, xli, 42-43, 271; in South 
Africa, 42; support for, 43 

Gandhi, Rajiv, 55-58, 468; assassinated, 
58, 463, 472, 528, 577; cabinet reshuf- 
fling by, 448-49; Congress (I) under, 
469; foreign policy under, 56, 527; 
Office of the Prime Minister under, 
448, 511; personal advisers to, 511; 
Punjab political crises under, 492, 610; 
President's Rule invoked by, 439; as 
prime minister, xlii, 56, 445, 447, 487; 
reforms under, 56, 306, 469-70, 498; 
at SAARC summit, 524; scandals 
involving, 56, 470, 498; state visits of, 
534, 544, 548 

Gandhi, Sanjay, 54; death of, 55, 468; in 
Lok Sabha, 55 

Gandhi, Sonia, 1, 473; Congress (I) 
under, 473 

Gandhi-Longowal Accord (1985), 492, 
610 

Ganesh, 140 

Ganesh Chaturthi festival, 154, 290 
Ganga-Brahmaputra drainage system, 68 
Ganga Plain, 67, 68 

Ganga River, 68; dam on, 222; distribu- 
tion of water from, 526; source of, 74, 
138 



813 



India: A Country Study 



Ganga- Yamuna river basin, 74-75; area 
of, 74 

Ganges River. See Ganga River 
gangs, 496 

Garhwali language, 221 
gas, natural, 337-39; pipelines, 338, 339, 
540 

GATT. See General Agreement on Tariffs 

and Trade 
Gautama, Siddhartha (the Buddha), 

xxxvii, 129-30 
Gayoom, Maumoon Abdul, 578 
Gaza: peacekeeping forces in, 578 
GDR See gross domestic product 
gems and jewelry: export of, 322 
genealogies, 245 

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 
(GATT) : Uruguay Round, 551 

general strike. See hartal 

Geneva Accords on Indochina (1954), 
537, 556 

Geological Survey of India, 337, 341 
George V ( 1 91 0-36) : visit of, 40 
Geostationary Launch Vehicle, 375 
'geostrategic situation: and foreign rela- 
tions, 516-17 
Germany, Federal Republic of (West 
Germany): aid from, 320, 370; in 
Aid-to-india Consortium, 319; invest- 
ment by, 554-55; loans from, 324; 
materiel from, 563, 588; motor vehicle 
production, 335; relations with, 554- 
55; space program of, 375; trade with, 
554-55 
Ghising, Subhash, 224, 226 
Gill, K.P.S.,493, 610 
Giri, Varahagiri Venkata, 466 
Glavkosmos, 544, 602 
GNR See gross national product 
Goa, 542; Portuguese possession of, 18, 

27; rural population of, 88 
Goans, 211 

Gobind Singh, Guru, 163; militant 

reforms of, 1 63-64 
Godavari River, 70, 75; dam on, 215; 

source of, 75 
Godavari River basin: agriculture in, 75; 

area of, 75; pilgrimage to, 152; rainfall 

in, 75 

Godse, Nathuram, 479 

Golaknath v. State of Punjab, 450 

Golden Temple, 163; occupation of, xlv, 



55, 167, 492; siege of, xlv, 167, 492, 
608 

Golkonda: Mughal war with, 24 
Golwalkar, M.S., 479 
Gomateshvasa. S^Bhagwan Bahubali 
Gond tribe, 186, 202; education in, 208; 

landholdings of, 206; population of, 

200; religion in, 210 
Gorbachev, Mikhail S., 544 
Gorkha Hill Council, 223, 225 
Gorkhaland, 223-26 

Gorkhaland movement, 223; origins of, 
223 

Gorkhaland National Liberation Front, 
223, 224 

Gorkhali language, 224 

Gorkhas: immigration of, 223 

Gould, Harold A, 277 

government (see also public sector), 300; 
bank loans to, 317-18; concentration 
of power in, 431, 433; disease-eradica- 
tion programs, 94-95; education 
under, 104; English as language of, 
194; growth in, 306; ineffectiveness of, 
431-32; irrigation policy, 383; Muslims 
in, 39; powers of, 433-34, 445-46; role 
of, in agricultural development, 382- 
83, 392; role of, in health care, 99- 
100; role of, in research and develop- 
ment, 363-68; state budgets under, 
314; structure of, xliii, 433, 441-62; 
universities, 108 

government, local, 458-61; municipal, 
460-61 , 470; panchayats in, 458-60 

government, state, 455-58; antipoverty 
programs under, 309; budgets of, 313- 
14; central government control of, 
457; civil service, 462; dissolution of, 
438; divisions of, 458; education 
under, 104-5; elections to, 456; execu- 
tive of, 456-57; land tenure under, 
386; legislatures of, 455-56; powers of, 
xliii, 433-34, 445-46; structure in, 
456; terms in, 456 

government control, xxxix, xliii, 330-31; 
of agricultural marketing, 421-22, 
423-24; of aircraft manufacturing, 
304; of atomic energy, 304; of bank- 
ing, xxxix, 312-13; of chemicals, 
xxxix, 330; of coal, 330; of defense 
industry, 304; of economy, 49, 298, 
304-25; of energy, 330; of exports, 



814 



Index 



297, 305; of fertilizer, 330; of foreign 
exchange, 304, 305, 321, 323; of 
imports, 297, 305; of industry, xxxix, 
297, 329; of investment, 305; of iron 
and steel, xxxix, 304, 330; of land ten- 
ure, 386; of metals, 330; of mining, 
xxxix, 304; of newspapers, 500-1; of 
oil, 330; of prices, 304, 305; of produc- 
tion, 304; of railroads, xxxix, 304; of 
services, 304; of shipbuilding, 304, 
330; of state governments, 457; of 
taxes, 457; of telecommunications, 
xxxix, 297, 304, 330, 355, 356, 501; of 
territories, 457-58; of trade, 302, 321; 
of transportation, 297, 342 

government finance: reorganized, 37 

Government of India Act (1919), 41; 
satyagraha against, 42 

Government of India Act (1935), 44; 
goals of, 44-45 

government spending: on education, 
105; on health care, 100-101; on non- 
governmental organizations, 503; on 
research and development, 50, 358, 
363-68 

governors, 456-57; appointment of, 456 
Graham, Bruce, 479 

grain (see also food grains): area sown in, 
407; availability of, 382; harvesting 
methods for, 403; prices, 404; produc- 
tion, 408-9, 410-11; supplies, 307-8 

Great Depression: agriculture during, 
391 

Greater Himalayan Range, 69 

Great Indian Desert, 67, 384-85; agricul- 
ture in, 384; climate of, 78, 384 

Greece: influence of, 9, 10; and mathe- 
matics, 359 

Green Revolution, xxxviii-xxxix, 362, 
381, 393, 410-12; area sown under, 
411; benefits of, 411; criteria for, 411; 
growth of, 411; socioeconomic impact 
of, 275, 412, 607-8; support for, 410 

Grierson, George, 182 

gross domestic product (GDP): growth 
rate, 303, 311; agriculture, 297, 299- 
300, 381; budget deficit, 312; commu- 
nications, 300; construction, 300, 335; 
exports, 321; finance, 300; fishing, 
297, 299-300; forestry, 297, 299-300; 
health care, 100; imports, 321; indus- 
try, 300; informal economy, 300; 



investment, 299; manufacturing, 297, 
300; mining and quarrying, 299-300, 
341; real estate, 300; research and 
development, 365; services sector, 300; 
taxes, 315; textile industry, 297; trade, 
300; transportation, 300; utilities, 300 
gross national product (GNP), 49; agri- 
culture as a percentage of, 392; 
defense spending as a percentage of, 
581; education spending as a percent- 
age of, 105; health care spending as a 
percentage of, 100 
Group of Fifteen, 558-59 
Grow More Food Campaign, 391 
Guatemala: peacekeeping forces in, 579 
guest workers: in Middle East, 326; in 
Persian Gulf, 302, 326; remittances 
from, 283, 302, 326 
Gujarat: Africans in, 214; agricultural 
growth in, 404; elections in, 481; for- 
estry agency in, 414; Jains in, 127, 128; 
hydroelectric projects in, 399; irriga- 
tion projects in, 399; nuclear power 
plant in, 340; oil in, 337, 338; Parsis in, 
171; personal names in, 246-47; politi- 
cal parties in, 481; under President's 
Rule, 54; rural population of, 88; 
teachers in, 107; tribes in, 200; urban- 
ization in, 86, 87 
Gujarati language, 182; native speakers 
of, 182 

Gupta Empire (320-550), 12-14; disinte- 
gration of, 14; education in, 13; medi- 
cine in, 13-14; religion in, 13 

gurdwaras, 166, 167, 486, 491 

Guru Granth Sahib (Holy Book of the 
Gurus), 164, 165 

gurus, 125, 279; role of, 164-65; Sikh, 
163, 164-65 

Haksar, Nandita, 611-12 
Hanuman, 136 
Harappa, 4 

Harappan culture (Indus Valley cul- 
ture), xxxv, 4-5; cities in, 4; decline in, 
5; discoveries in, 359; economy of, 4- 
5; languages in, 5 

Hardwar: pilgrimage to, 152 

Hargobind, Guru, 163 

Hariharal, 19 

Harijans. See Dalits 



815 



India: A Country Study 



Harsha Vardhana (606-647), 13 

hartal (general strike): of 1919, 41 

Haryana (state), xliv; agricultural growth 
in, 404; elections in, 475; fertilizer 
consumption in, 400; Green Revolu- 
tion in, 411-12; Hindi in, 191; irriga- 
tion in, 407; land reform in, 390; 
poverty in, 301; roads in, 349; sex ratio 
in, 253; Sikh shrines in, 166 

Haryana Plain, 67, 68; irrigation of, 68; 
urban areas in, 86 

Hastings, Warren, 32 

Hazratbal mosque, 495 

health, 94-99; influences on, 94; SAARC 
program for, 559; research in, 366 

health, public, 99; vaccine production, 
368-69 

health care, 99-103; ayurvedic, 103; dis- 
coveries in, 359; in Gupta Empire, 13- 
14; impact of, on population growth, 
82; for poor people, 308; role of gov- 
ernment in, 99-100; unani, 103 

health care professionals, 101, 103; num- 
ber of, 101, 103, 366; training of, 103, 
361 

health facilities, 63, 101-3; adversarial 
role of, 102; dispensaries, 102; equip- 
ment in, 102-3; family planning pro- 
grams in, 90, 102; geographic 
distribution of, 102; hospitals, 102, 
286; number of, 101, 102; primary 
health centers, 101-2; problems in, 
102; rural, 102; urban, 286 

health problems, xl, 64; AIDS, 97-99; 
attempts to control, 94-95; blindness, 
96; cancer, 97; cardiovascular disease, 
97; diarrheal diseases, 96; disease, 94- 
97; filaria, 95; goiter, 96; HIV infec- 
tion, 97; leprosy, 95-96; malaria, 95; 
malnutrition, 94, 96; pneumonic 
plague, 96; smallpox, 143; tuberculo- 
sis, 96 

heavy water, 373 

Hedgewar, Keshav Baliram, 175, 478-79 

Hezb-ul Mujahideen, 495, 607 

hierarchy, 234-35, 292; academic, 235; 
in business, 235; of caste, 267; of clans, 
244; in families, 235, 247, 254-55; of 
hijras, 280; in Islam, 234-35; of judges, 
453; and language, 183-85; marriage 
up in, 261; of renunciants, 280; of 
sadhus, 280; by sex, 247 



High Altitude Warfare School, 587 
hijras (transvestite -eunuchs) , 279, 280- 
81; hierarchy of, 281; living arrange- 
ments of, 281; population of, 280; 
powers of; worship by, 280 
Hill Area Development Programme, 394 
Hillmen's Association, 223-24; origins 
of, 224 

Himachal Pradesh (state), xliv; Bud- 
dhists in, 131; development of, 222; 
elections in, 481; Hindi in, 191; politi- 
cal parties in, 481; poverty in, 301; ref- 
ugees in, 532; rural population of, 88; 
Sikh shrines in, 166; tribes in, 199 

Himalayas, 63, 64, 68-70; agriculture in, 
384; area of, 383; climate of, 78; crop 
and livestock patterns in, 383; extent 
of, 68; formation of, 68; land use in, 
383-84; livestock in, 384; population 
density in, 87; soil in, 384; tea planta- 
tions in, 384; tribes in, 169, 206 

Hindi language {see also Urdu), 182, 

187- 92; in British Raj, 188; broadcasts 
in, 356; cinema, 191; demonstrations 
against, 51, 195, 485; dominance of, 

188- 91; geographic distribution of, 
191; as language of instruction, 207; as 
lingua franca, 191; literary forms of, 
188, 191; mutual intelligibility of, with 
Punjabi and Urdu, 184, 191; native 
speakers of, 182; as official language, 
182, 183, 187-88, 195, 485; origins of, 
188; publications in, 500; script, 188; 
spread of, 188; standard, 188-91 

Hindu: charity, 146; enlightened mas- 
ters, 132-33; gurus, 125; inheritance 
laws of, 248; influence, 210; life-cycle 
rituals, 146-48; monastic communi- 
ties, 132-33; pilgrimages, 149-53; pil- 
grims, 144, 152; refugees, 46; 
traditions, 5-6 

Hindu festivals, 153-54; Dipavali, 23, 
142, 154; Dussehra, 136; Ganesh 
Chaturthi, 154; Holi, 138, 154; Jan- 
mashtami, 154; Mahashivaratri, 154; 
parades in, 153; participation in, 128; 
plays in, 153; Pongal, 154; Ramana- 
vami, 154 

Hindu goddesses, 141-43; blood sacri- 
fice to, 143; local, 143; of smallpox, 
143 

Hindu gods, 121, 122; hymns of, 134; as 



816 



Index 



legal landholders, 149; local, 143-45; 
offerings to, 134, 144, 145; possession 
by, 144; shrines to, 143, 144; trinity of, 
140-41; worship of, 133-45 
Hindu-Muslim tensions, 495-98; causes 
of, 495 

Hindu-Muslim violence, xlv-xlvi, 176, 

302,477, 497,516,524, 607 
Hindu nationalism, xliii, 478-82, 516, 

539 

Hindu rituals, 124-25; at birth, 146; initi- 
ation, 146-47; life-cycle, 146-48; dur- 
ing pregnancy, 146 

Hindu temples, 15, 121, 148-49, 152; 
administration of, 149; donations for, 
149; form of, 148; layout of, 149 

Hindu worship, 133-45; domestic, 145- 
46; public, 148-54; by women, 145-46 

Hinduism, 15; and Buddhism, 130; 
castes in, 234, 266-76; ceremonies of, 
145-54; Dalit rejection of, 131, 171, 
177, 275; dharma in, 252; female prin- 
ciple in, 141; influence of, 176; karma 
in, 122-25, 252, 271; kismat in, 252; 
male principle in, 141; merit in, 145; 
number of followers of, 119; origins 
of, 13, 121; pollution in, 145, 148; pur- 
dah in, 248; purification in, 145, 235- 
40; reincarnation in, 123-24, 266 

Hinduism, Shaivist: devotional literature 
of, 15 

Hinduism, Vaishnavist: devotional litera- 
ture of, 15 

Hindu Mahasabha, 479 

Hindu renunciants, 132-33, 279-80; 
generative power of, 139 

Hindus: assimilation of, under Mughals, 
21; language of, 192; in middle class, 
279; political affiliation of, 463, 516; 
reforms by, 34 

Hindustani. See Urdu language 

Hindustan Motors, 335 

Hindustan Shipyard, 352 

Hindustan Times, 357 

Hindustan Times Group, 500 

Hirakud Dam, 75 

Hiro, Dilip, 276 

history: themes of, 3 

Holi festival, 138, 154, 284 

Holy Book of the Gurus. See Guru Granth 
Sahib 

holy men. Seesadhus 



holy women. See sadhvis 
Home Guards, 601, 614 
homosexuals, 280 

Honduras: peacekeeping forces in, 579 
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Cor- 
poration, 317 
Hooghly Dock and Port Engineers, 352 
Hope, Victor Alexander John, Marquis 

of Linlithgow, 45, 568 
horticulture, 389; support for, 426 
housing: construction, 302, 335; short- 
ages, 286, 302, 335; in urban areas, 
286 
HTV, 357 
Huang Hua, 533 

human rights abuses, 494, 564, 565, 606, 

611-12, 619 
Humayun (1530-56), 20 
Hume, A.O., 38 
Hunas (White Huns), 13 
hunting: percentage of work force in, 

325 

Hyderabad: airport, 354; destruction of, 
215; merger of, with India, 49, 214; 
population of, 285; Tata Institute facil- 
ity in, 376 

hydraulic engineering: technological 

developments in, 359, 362 
hydroelectric power, 76, 222, 339, 340; 

capacity, 340; controversy over, 340; 

projects, 399 



IdalFitr, 159 
Idal Zuha, 159 

IIT See Indian Institute of Technology 
Iletmish, Shams-ud-din (1211-36), 16 
IMF. See International Monetary Fund 
immigration: to Assam, 196, 487, 610; 

from Bangladesh, 526, 610 
Imperial Council of Agricultural 

Research, 391 
imports: of chemicals, 322; from China, 
341; dependence on, 306; of fertiliz- 
ers, 322; financed by exports, 322; of 
food, 393; government control of, 
297, 305; of iron, 322; liberalization 
of, 306-7; of metals, 322; of oilseeds, 
382; as percentage of gross domestic 
product, 321; of petroleum, 322, 332, 
337, 538; of pharmaceuticals, 322; pol- 
icies on, 427; restrictions on, 306, 306- 



817 



India: A Country Study 



7; of steel, 322, 331; of uranium, 341 
import substitution, xxxix, 321; goods, 
305 

INA. See Indian National Army 

income (see also wages): under five-year 

plans, 310; spent on food, 307; taxes, 

421 

income distribution, 301; attempts to 
improve, 312 

independence, 569; movement, 38-46 

India Act (1784), 32-33 

India-China Expert Group, 536 

Indian Academy of Sciences, 361, 370; 
founded, 370; funding, 370 

Indian Administrative Service {see also 
bureaucracy), xliii, 37, 461-62; affir- 
mative action in, 216; corruption in, 
462; examinations for, 461; district col- 
lectors in, 458; diversity in, 461; train- 
ing in, 461 

Indian Agricultural Research Institute, 
395-96 

Indian Airlines, 352 

Indian-Chinese Joint Working Group on 
the Border Issue, 535 

Indian Civil Service. Sa? Indian Adminis- 
trative Service 

Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 
513-14 

Indian Council of Agricultural Research, 
364, 394; fishing under, 416; functions 
of, 368; funding for, 365; origins of, 
368, 391; programs of, 395-96, 400, 
402 

Indian Council of Medical Research, 98 

Indian Custodian Force, 556 

Indian Express, 500 

Indian Express Group, 500 

Indian Foreign Service, 461, 511; diplo- 
matic missions of, 512 

Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, 
369 

Indian Institute of Petroleum, 372 
Indian Institute of Science, 361, 369; 

computer for, 551; faculty of, 370; 

founded, 369; organization of, 370 
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), 

370; admission to, 371; campuses, 370; 

departments of, 370-71; support for, 

370 

Indian Institute of Technology Act 
(1956), 370 



Indian Marine, 587 
Indian Meteorological Service, 76 
Indian Military Academy, 584, 587 
Indian Military Nursing Service, 587 
Indian National Army (INA — Azad Hind 

Fauj), 568; dissolution of, 568-69; 

women in, 568 
Indian National Committee of Space 

Research, 373 
Indian National Congress. See Congress 

party 

Indian National Satellite Space Segment 

Project, 373 
Indian National Satellite System (Insat), 

374 

Indian National Scientific Documenta- 
tion Centre, 371; National Science 
Library, 371 

Indian National Trade Union Congress, 
327 

Indian Naval Academy, 590 

Indian Ocean: military cooperation in, 
589; as zone of peace, 543 

Indian Peace Keeping Force: atrocities 
committed by, 577; casualties of, 577; 
in Sri Lanka, xlviii, 527, 563-64, 576- 
77; support for Tamils by, 576; with- 
drawal of, 577 

Indian Penal Code, 615; categories of 
crime under, 616-17; categories of 
punishment under, 617 

Indian People's Front, 484 

Indian People's Party. See Bharatiya 
Janata Party 

Indian Police Service, 612, 613 

Indian Post Office (Amendment) Bill, 
447 

Indian Railways, 345; finances of, 314; 
Research, Design, and Standards 
Organisation, 346 

Indian Space Research Organisation, 
373, 374, 544; sanctions against, 602 

Indian Technical and Economic Cooper- 
ation Programme, 513 

Indian Vaccines Corporation, 369 

Indian Workers' Association, 327 

India-Taipei Association, 536 

Indira Gandhi Canal, 384-85, 398; com- 
pletion date, 384, 398 

Indo-Aryan languages, 181, 185, 221 

Indo-European languages (see also under 
individual languages), 5 



818 



Index 



Indo-Gangetic Plain, 64, 67-68; agricul- 
ture in, 384-85; area of, 67; borders 
of, 67; climate of, 78; crop and live- 
stock patterns in, 383; irrigation in, 
384; marriage in, 257; rainfall in, 68, 
384; regions of, 67; topography of, 67; 
urban areas in, 86 

Indonesia: maritime border with, 74 

Indo-Pakistan Joint Commission, 523 

Indo-Pakistani war (1947), xlvi, 493, 510, 
519, 570-71; casualties in, 571; 
cease-fire in, 520, 571; origins of, 570 

Indo-Pakistani war (1965), xlvi, xlvii, 51, 
299, 310, 493, 510; casualties in, 571; 
cease-fire in, 521, 542, 571; China's 
support for Pakistan in, 533; origins 
of, 520-21, 571; setdement of, 72, 521 

Indo-Pakistani war (1971), xlvi, xlvii, 52- 
53, 299, 493, 510, 571-74; cease-fire 
in, 547, 572; economic crisis caused 
by, 53-54; end of, 521, 572; foreign 
support for Pakistan in, 533, 538; ori- 
gins of, 521, 572; State of Emergency 
during, 439; strategy of, 572; success 
of, 563, 572; western front of, 573-74 

Indo-Sri Lankan Accord (1987), 563, 
576,577 

Indo-Tibetan Border Police, 598, 600 
Indo-United States Joint Commission, 

547 
Indra, 121 

industrial conglomerates, 305 
industrial development, 222; under 

five-year plans, 310; under Nehru, 50; 

research in, 366 
industrial growth, 299, 328 
industrialization, 304, 328, 330; under 

five-year plans, 309-10 
industrial output, 328, 329 
industrial policy, 304, 329-31 
Industrial Policy Resolution (1948), 304, 

329 

Industrial Policy Resolution (1956), 304, 
329 

Industries (Development and Regula- 
tion) Act (1951), 304-5 

industry, xxxvi, 328-42; cottage, xxxvi, 
50, 300; credit for, 317; energy con- 
sumed by, 339; exports by, 330; under 
five-year plans, 310, 311; government 
control of, 297, 310, 329; heavy, 50, 
297; investment in, 305; liberalization 



of, 329; management in, 330; manag- 
ing agencies for, 330; as percentage of 
gross domestic product, 300; public 
ownership of, 329; quality in, 330; 
research organizations in, 371-72, 
377; scientific and technical support 
for, 358 
Indus Valley, 67 

infant mortality, 264; causes of, 93, 252, 
253; rate, 93, 94, 254 

inflation, 467; rate of, 303, 318 

information science: research organiza- 
tions in, 371 

infrastructure: development of, 222, 320; 
under economic planning, 310; invest- 
ment in, 299 

inland waterways, 352 

Inland Waterways Authority of India, 
352 

Insat. See Indian National Satellite Sys- 
tem 

Insecticides Act (1968), 402 

Institute of Criminology and Forensic 

Science, 613 
Institute of Microbial Technology, 369 
Instrument of Accession of Kashmir to 

India, 519 

insurance services: deposit, 317; nation- 
alized, 304 

Integrated Fisheries Project, 418 

Integrated Guided Missile Development 
Programme, 601-2 

Integrated Rural Development Pro- 
gramme, 394 

intellectual property violations, 549-50 

intelligence: analysis, 511; gathering, 
511, 602-4; services, 602-4 

Intelligence Bureau, 602 

Intelsat. See International Telecommuni- 
cations Satellite Corporation 

Intensive Area Agricultural Programme, 
393 

Intensive Agricultural District Pro- 
gramme, 393, 397 

interest rates: on bank loans, 317; liberal- 
ization of, 306 

internal security, 605-12; as mission of 
armed forces, 605-6 

International Airport Authority of India, 
354 

International Commission of Jurists, 
328, 606 



819 



India: A Country Study 



International Commissions of Control 
and Supervision, 537 

International Monetary Fund (IMF): lib- 
eralization required by, 302; loan 
from, 54, 324; negotiations with, 302 

International Rice Research Institute, 
427 

International Telecommunications Sat- 
ellite Corporation (Intelsat), 374 

International Telecommunications 
Union, 374 

Inter-Services Intelligence Agency of 
Pakistan, 607 

investment {see also foreign investment): 
in electric power, 299, 312; in energy, 
306; in industry, 305; in infrastructure, 
299; in irrigation, 299; in oil, 306; as 
percentage of gross domestic product, 
299; private, 56, 299, 306, 312; regula- 
tion of, 305; in research, 57; in steel, 
306, 312; in transportation, 312, 342 

'Iran: gas pipeline from, 338, 339, 540; 
Islamic government of, 538-39; oil 
from, 538; relations with, 538, 540; 
state visits to, 540 

Iran-Iraq War, 538 

Iraq: invasion of Kuwait by, 302, 321, 
513; oil from, 538; relations with, 538 

iron, 341; export of, 341; government 
control of, xxxix, 304; import of, 322; 
in Jharkand, 219; in Karnataka, 341; 
production, 341, 360; reserves, 341 

irrigation, xxxviii, 381, 397-400; dams 
for, 340, 399; under Delhi Sultanate, 
17; development programs, 393; dis- 
placement of people by, 399; of Dra- 
vidian people, 12; under five-year 
plans, 309, 310, 311; funding for, 399; 
in Haryana, 407; importance of, 397; 
in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 384; invest- 
ment in, 299; from Kaveri River, 75; 
land area under, 397, 398, 399-400; 
management of, 398-99; network, 
360; policy, 383; and population, 82; 
problems with, 398; projects, 68, 76, 
82, 393, 398, 399; pump sets for, 402; 
in Punjab, 407; spending on, 397; sup- 
port for, 426; systems, 397-98; techno- 
logical developments in, 359-60 

Islam {see also Muslims), xxxvii, 155-62; 
afterlife in, 266; calendar of, 158; in 
Central Asia, 16; circumcision in, 158; 



conversion to, 23, 176-77; festivals of, 
128, 158, 160; Five Pillars of, 156; fun- 
damentalist, 176; hierarchy in, 234- 
35; Hindu criticisms of, 39; inherit- 
ance laws of, 248; introduction of, 
xxxvi, 15-17; marriage in, 158, 258; 
origins of, 155; purdah in, 248, 250; 
schools of, 161; sects of, 157; sharia, 
16, 496-97; South Asian traditions of, 
158-62; spread of, 119; Sufi, 160; 
tenets of, 155-57; ulama of, 161 

Islamic Party. .Seejamaati Islami 

islands, 71 

Israel: policy toward, 510; relations with, 

539 

Italy: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319; 
motor vehicle production, 335 



Jagmohan, 522 

Jagsons Airlines, 354 

Jahangir (1605-27), 22, 163; expansion 
under, 23-24 

Jainism, xxxvii, 15, 125-28; discipline of, 
126; festivals of, 128; karma in, 126; 
missionaries of, 12; and nirvana, 126; 
number of followers of, 119; origins 
of, 125-26; philanthropy in, 128; pil- 
grimage sites of, 128; rituals of, 127- 
28; soul in, 126; temples of, 15, 127- 
28; women in, 127 

Jainism, Digambara, 126, 127 

Jainism, Svetambara, 126-27 

Jains: education of, 128; geographic dis- 
tribution of, 127, 128; persecution of, 
23; population of, 127 

Jain TV, 357 

Jai Singh II, Sawai, 360 

jajmani system, 272 

Jallianwala Bagh massacre, 41 

Jamaati Islami (Islamic Party), 161 

Jameel, Fathullah, 578 

Jamkhed Project, 91-92 

Jammu and Kashmir (state): accession 
vote in, 520; agriculture in, 384, 404; 
armed forces in, 494, 563; Buddhists 
in, 131; Chinese claim to, 574; con- 
flicts over, xlv, 46, 57, 71, 511, 542, 
544, 545, 550, 570; education in, 112; 
elections in, li; fraternal polyandry in, 
243; government of, 487, 494; human 
rights violations in, 565; legislature of, 



820 



Index 



455; merger of, with India, 49; Mus- 
lims in, 155; Pakistan's claim to, xlv, 
xlvii, xlix, 511, 519-22; political unrest 
in, xlv, 491 , 493-95, 515, 522, 524, 551, 
564, 605, 607, 620; poverty in, 301; 
under President's Rule, 438, 487, 494, 
521; proposed plebiscite in, 520; 
regionalist movement in, 214, 516; 
secessionist movement in, 228, 516, 
522, 607; tribes in, 199; Urdu in, 191; 
wars over. 51, 52-53 
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, 
495 

Jamuna River. See Yamuna River 
Janaki (widow of M.G. Ramachandran), 
485 

Jana Sangh, 175, 479; and foreign policy, 
515; in Janata Party, 476, 479 

Janata Dal (People's Party), 1, 58, 431, 
471; constituency of, 471, 472; decline 
of, 478, 505; formed, 477; in local gov- 
ernments, 490; opposition of, to Con- 
gress, 474; in Parliament, 471 

Janata government, 54-55, 484, 548; 
demise of, 476 

Janata Morcha (People's Front) , 54 

Janata Party, 54, 175; components of, 
476, 479; in elections, 476; estab- 
lished, 468; factions in, 468; and for- 
eign policy, 515; in Janata Dal, 477; 
opposition of, to Congress, 474, 476; 
platform of, 476 

Janata politics, 474-78 

Janmashtami festival, 154 

Jantar Mantars observatory complex, 
360 

Japan: aid from, 320, 426; in Aid-to-india 
Consortium, 319; investment by, 554- 
55; loans from, 320, 324; motor vehi- 
cle production, 335; relations with, 
554-55; trade with, 322, 554-55; in 
World War II, 568 

Jats: kinship of, 245 

Jawahar Employment Plan. See Jawahar 

Rozgar Yojana 
Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, 351 
Jawaharlal Nehru Technological Univer- 
sity, 109 

Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (Jawahar Employ- 
ment Plan), 308, 394, 459-60 
Jayalalitha, 485 

Jayawardene, Junius Richard (J.R.), 527 



Jay Santos hi Ma, 1 45 

Jewelled Anklet. See Cilappatikaram 

Jewelled Belt. See Manimekalai 

Jews {see also Judaism) : emigration of, 
173; geographic distribution of, 173- 
74; immigration of, 211; number of, 
174 

Jhansi: annexed by British, 32 

Jharkhand: administration of, 218-19; 
minerals in, 219; request of, for state 
status, 220-21 

Jharkhand Movement, 218-21; claims of, 
218; dams in, 220; forestry in, 220; ori- 
gins of, 220 

Jharkhand Party, 220, 221 

Jhelum River, 68 

Jinnah, Mohammad Ali, 45; as president 
of Muslim League, 45 

jizya, 23, 24 

Joint Cipher Bureau, 604 
Joint Intelligence Committee, 602 
Joshi, B.C., 536 
Joshi.P.C, 222 

Judaism (see also Jews) , 173-74; introduc- 
tion of, 120 

judges, 615, 618; appointment of, 452- 
53; under British, 33; code of conduct 
for, 451-52; hierarchy of, 453; retire- 
ment of, 449; Supreme Court, 449; 
transfer of, 452 

Judges Transferca.se, 450-51 

judiciary, xliii-xliv, 449-54; under Brit- 
ish, 33 

Junagadh: merger of, with India, 49 
Justice Party, 485 

jute: area sown in, 410; cultivation of, 
298; export of, 381, 410; industry, 297; 
marketing of, 422; prices, 404; produc- 
tion, 410; research on, 368 

Jute Corporation of India, 422 

Kabir, 135 
Kailash, 533 
Kakar, Sudhir, 254 
Kali, 139-40, 142-43 
Kalimpong: language in, 224 
Kamban, 15 
Kanchenjunga, 69 

Kanchipuram: Hindu seat of learning at, 
132 

Kandla, port of, 350 



821 



India: A Country Study 



Kanishka (78-108), 11 
Kankara Coast, 64 

Kannada language, 15, 182, 186; native 

speakers of, 182 
Kanpur: IIT campus in, 370 
Karachi Agreement (1949) , 520 
Karakoram Range, 69 
karma: and caste, 271; in Hinduism, 

122-25, 252, 271; in Jainism, 126; in 

Sikhism, 164 
karma-yoga, 175 

Karnataka (state): Africans in, 214; agri- 
culture in, 385, 404; elections in, 481; 
iron in, 341; Jains in, 127; land tenure 
in, 387; mining in, 341; political par- 
ties in, 481, 490; population growth 
rate in, 93; rainfall in, 77; tribes in, 
200 

Karnataka High Court, 1 09 
Karttikeya, 1 39-40 
Karunanidhi, M., 485 
Kashi. SeeVaranasi 

Kashmir (state). S^Jammu and Kashmir 

(state) 
Kashmiri language, 182 
Kautilya, 10 

Kaveri River, 70, 75-76; irrigation from, 
75; pilgrimage to, 152; source of, 75 

Kazakstan: relations with, 540; Rao's visit 
to, 541; security cooperation with, 541 

Kedarnath: pilgrimage to, 152 

Kerala (state): agricultural taxes in, 421; 
elections in, 475; farms in, 386; fertil- 
ity in, 254; fertilizer consumption in, 
400; Jews in, 173; land tenure in, 387; 
literacy rate in, 106, 244; mining in, 
342; political parties in, xliv, 483, 484; 
political representation in, 52; popula- 
tion growth rate in, 93; under Presi- 
dent's Rule, 482; rainfall in, 77; roads 
in, 349; sex ratio in, 253; tribes in, 200 

Keshavananda Bharati v. the State of Kerala, 
450 

Kesri, Sitaram, li 

Khalji Dynasty (1290-1320), 16 

Khan, Abdul Qadir, 524 

Khan, Bayram, 20 

Khan, Sayyid Ahmad, 39 

Khan, Zafar (Ala-ud-Din Bahman 

Shah), 17 
Kharagpur: IIT campus in, 370 
Kharia tribe: religious beliefs of, 168, 169 



Khasi tribe: Christians in, 171; family 
structure in, 243-44; literacy rate of, 
244; women in, 244 

Khatik caste. See Butcher caste 

Khomeini, Ruholla Mussaui (Ayatollah), 
538-39 

Khrushchev, Nikita, 541 

kinship (see also families) , 241-66, 244- 
47; clan, 244; cooperation in, 245, 
246, 254; matrilineage, 245-46; of 
Muslims, 245; patrilineage, 241-42, 
244, 245; and purdah, 249-50; recog- 
nition of, 245 

kinship, Active, 246-47; in business, 235; 
of hijras, 281; in universities, 235; in 
villages, 284 

kinship systems: Dravidian, 12 

kismat, 252 

Kochi: airport, 354; fishing in, 417; port 

of, 350; shipyards in, 352 
Kochi Jews, 173 

Koirala, Girij ad Prasad (CP.) , 530 
Kolar: Tata Institute facility in, 376 
Konkan Coast, 64 

Konkani language, 182; mutual intelligi- 
bility of, with Marathi, 184; as Sched- 
uled Language, 184 

Korea, Republic of (South Korea): 
motor vehicle production, 335 

Korean War (1950-53): end of, 556; par- 
ticipation in, 578 

Kosala Kingdom, 8 

Kosygin, Aleksei N., 542 

Kothari, Rajni, 466, 496 

Kreisberg, Paul H., 56, 57 

Krishna, 136-37; birthday of, 154; depic- 
tions of, 137 

Krishna River, 70, 75; dam on, 215; pil- 
grimage to, 152; source of, 75 

Krishna River basin, 18; rainfall in, 75 

Kshatriya (warrior) castes: in Aryan sys- 
tem, 7; dharma of, 270; diet of, 236; 
origins of, 267 

K2 (Mount Godwin-Austen), 69 

Kumaoni language, 221 

Kurseong: language in, 224 

Kuru Kingdom, 8 

Kurukhs, 186 

Kushana Kingdom, 11 

Kuwait: Iraqi invasion of, 302, 321, 513; 
joint venture with, 338; oil from, 538 

Kyrgyzstan: relations with, 540 



822 



Index 



labor {see also work force), 325-28; 
bonded, 219, 328; child, 105-6, 112, 
255, 325; disputes, 328; by women, 250 

labor relations, 327-28 

labor unions, xli; membership in, 327 

Laccadive Islands, 71 

Ladakh, 226 

Ladakh Autonomous Development 

Councils Act (1995), 226 
Ladakh District, 520, 574 
Lahore, 23 

Lakshadweep, 71; Muslims in, 155; 

Scheduled Tribes in, 88; tribes in, 200 
Lakshmi, 136, 138; incarnations of, 141— 

42 

Lai, Devi, 477, 478 

land: arable, 383; area, 64; borrowing 
against, 388; cropping patterns, 383; 
cultivated, 383; double-cropped, 383, 
399; illegal occupation of, 204; rental, 
298, 390; sharecropping of, 298; sub- 
divisions, 387-88; taxes, 314-15, 421; 
tenants, 390; tribal, 203-4, 209, 219 

land distribution, 275, 386, 390; to agri- 
cultural workers, 388; and farm size, 
386 

landholding: categories, 386-88; ceiling 
on size of, 389, 390; consolidation of, 
390; structure of, 387 

landowners {see also zamindars): absen- 
tee, 50, 388; caste of, 273; labor of, 
283; tribal, 219; village, 282 

landownership, 298 

land reform, 309, 388-91, 392; in 
Andhra Pradesh, 214; exemptions, 
389-90; under Indira Gandhi, 52; 
laws, 389-90, 449-50 

land tenure, 386-91; factors affecting, 
386; laws, 386-87; state control of, 386 

land use, 383-86 

language, national: attempts to choose, 

183; English as, 183; Hindi as, 183 
language policy, 184 

languages {see also Scheduled Lan- 
guages; see also under individual lan- 
guages and language families; see also 
under linguistic) , 5, 7, 15, 51, 185-94; 
broadcasts in, 198-99, 356; and caste, 
183-84; and Christian missionaries, 
171; and dialect, 185, 197; features of 
South Asian, 187; and hierarchy, 183- 
84; of instruction, 34, 108; knowledge 



of, 192, 193; link, 187; literary, 183; 
local, 229; number of, 182; official, 
182, 194-95, 224; political consider- 
ations regarding, 184; regional, 182, 
184, 197, 198, 356; and social context, 
197-99; spoken, 5, 186, 197-98; stan- 
dardization of, 197, 198-99; of tribes, 
171; written, 171, 197-98, 210 
language use, 184; and state boundaries, 
184 

Laos: peacekeeping missions in, 556; 

relations with, 537 
Launderer caste: status of, 267 
Law, Edward, 31 
law enforcement, 612-16 
Lawrence, Stringer, 565 
lawyers, 34 

Leatherworker (Chamar) caste: politi- 
cal affiliation of, 490, 491; status of, 
237, 267, 269, 272 

Lebanon: peacekeeping forces in, 579 

Left Front, 1 

legal system: codes in, 33 

legislation, 433; introduction of, 444; 
involving finance, 445; vote on, 444 

legislative process, 444-46 

legislature, 441-46 

Lesser Himalayas, 69 

Liberation Force. See Mukti Bahini 

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam 
(LTTE) , 57, 472, 527, 528; materiel 
supplied to, 577-78; operations 
against, 564, 576; surveillance of, 577 

life-cycle rituals: birth, 146, 158, 166, 
168; death, 147-48, 158, 166, 172; 
funeral, 147-48, 168, 172; Hindu, 
146-48; initiation, 146-47, 172, 256; 
interdependence in, 272-73, 284; 
Jain, 128; marriage, 147, 158, 166, 168, 
172; Muslim, 158; Santal, 168; Sikh, 
166; Zoroastrian, 172 

life stages (ashrama), 251-66; adulthood, 
262-64; in Aryan system, 7; childhood, 
252-56; ideal, 251 

linguistic diversity, 181, 183, 233; reasons 
for, 183-84 

linguistic minorities, 184—85, 229; educa- 
tion of, 184 

linguistic regionalism, 49-50 

linguistic relations, 181-99 

linguistics: discoveries in, 185, 359 

linguisitic separatism: in Punjab, 52 



823 



India: A Country Study 



linguistic states, 184, 194-95; organiza- 
tion of, 195 

Linguistic Survey of India (Grierson), 182 

Lion of Kashmir. See Abdullah, Sheikh 
Mohammed 

Li Peng, 534-35 

literacy: in English, 193 

literacy rate, 106; in Bihar, 106; cam- 
paigns to improve, 106, 312; of Chris- 
tians, 244; female, 106, 113; in Kerala, 
106, 244; in Khasi tribe, 244; male, 
106, 113 

literature: Tamil, 12; tribal, 1 71 

livestock, 412-13; ancient, 4; cattle, 412; 
education, 394, 395; in Himalayas, 
384; in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 385; land- 
holdings for, 389; patterns, 383; per- 
centage of work force in, 325; 
research, 368, 394, 395; as source of 
energy, 41 2 

Lodi, Ibrahim (1517-26), 20 

Lodi Dynasty (1451-1526), 16 

Lok Sabha, 441-44; Committee on 
External Affairs, 514; foreign affairs 
under, 514; functions of, 441; govern- 
ment budget under, 313; members of, 
443; money bills in, 445; number of 
seats in, 441; powers of, 441; reserved 
seats in, 436-37, 443; sessions of, 443; 
term in, 443 

Longowal, Harchand Singh, 492, 610 

LTTE. See Liberation Tigers of Tamil 
Eelam 

Lucknow: education in, 113 
LucknowPact (Hi), 40 
Lucknow University, 109 
Lutheran Church: number members of, 
171 



Madras, 290; airport, 354; as British pres- 
ident, 29, 32; fishing in, 417; IIT cam- 
pus in, 370; population of, 285; port 
of, 350, 351; public transportation in, 

349, 350 

Madras (state) (see also Tamil Nadu) : 
demonstrations in, 51; political repre- 
sentation in, 52 

Madhya Pradesh: agriculture in, 385; 
coal in, 336; education in, 112; elec- 
tions in, 475, 481; family structure in, 
258-59; forests in, 413; Hindi in, 191; 



hydroelectric projects in, 399; irriga- 
tion projects in, 399; Jains in, 128; 
political parties in, 481, 490-91; pov- 
erty in, 301; Scheduled Tribes in, 88; 
tribes in, 200; urbanization in, 86 

Magadha Kingdom, 8, 9-10 

Magadhi language, 192 

Mahabharata (Great Battle of the Descen- 
dants of Bharata), xxxv, 9, 136-37, 
142; broadcast of, 502 

Mahabodhi Society (Society of Great 
Enlightenment), 130-31 

Mahanadi River, 67, 75 

Mahanagar Telephone Nigam, 355 

Maharashtra: Africans in, 214; agricul- 
ture in, 385, 404; Buddhists in, 131; 
farms in, 386; forests in, 413; hydro- 
electric projects in, 399; irrigation 
projects in, 399; land distribution in, 
390; landholding ceiling in, 390; legis- 
lature of, 455; Jains in, 127, 128; 
nuclear power plant in, 340; Parsis in, 
171; population growth rate in, 93; 
rural population of, 88; Scheduled 
Tribes in, 88; tribes in, 200; urbaniza- 
tion in, 86 

Mahars: conversion of, to Buddhism, 177 

Mahashivaratri festival, 154 

Mahavira, Vardamana, xxxvii, 1 25-26 

Mahmud of Ghazni, 16 

Maintenance of Internal Security Act 
(1971), 439; politicians arrested 
under, 439; repealed, 440 

Maithili language, 191, 192 

Malabar Coast, 64 

Ma lay a la Man or a ma, 500 

Malayalam language, 15, 182, 186; in 
Christian churches, 170; native speak- 
ers of, 182; publications in, 500 

Malaysia: military cooperation with, 537 

Maldives: aid to, 526, 531; border with, 
74, 531; coup attempt in, xlviii, 531, 
548, 564, 578; membership of, in 
SAARC, 559; military assistance to, 
xlviii, 531, 548, 564, 578 

Malwa Plateau, 67 

Mamluk Dynasty (1206-90), 16 

Manasarowar Lake, 74 

Mandal Commission report: opposition 
to, 222-23, 274-75, 477; support for, 
478 

Manekshaw, S.H.EJ. (Sam), 595 



824 



Index 



Manimekalai (The Jewelled Belt), 15 

Manipur: Scheduled Tribes in, 88; ten- 
sions of, with central government, 
227, 611; tribes in, 199, 200 

Manipuri language, 182 

Mansarowar Lake, 533 

Manual of Military Law and Regulation, 
604 

manufacturing, 300, 331-35; of con- 
sumer goods, 304; government con- 
trol of, 304; as percentage of gross 
domestic product, 297, 300; percent- 
age of work force in, 325; 
self-sufficiency in, 329 

Manushi, 291 

Map am Yumco Lake, 74, 533 
Maratha Confederacy: British acquisi- 
tion of, 31 

Marathi language, 182; mutual intelligi- 
bility of, with Konkani,184; native 
speakers of, 182; as regional language, 
197 

Marathas, 26-27; Mughal war with, 24 
Marine Products Export Authority, 417 
Marmagao: airport, 354; port of, 350, 
351 

Marquess of Dalhousie. See Ramsay, 
James Andrew Brown 

marriage {see also brides; dowry; wid- 
ows), 256-62; age, average, 92; age, 
minimum, 50, 256; arranged, 7, 194, 
256, 257, 259-60; Buddhist, 132; child, 
23, 244, 256, 262, 291; cross-cousin, 
12, 258; Dravidian, 12, 257; emotional 
ties in, 247, 250; exogamous, 245-46, 
257-58; in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 257; 
intercaste, 270, 288; interethnic, 22; 
for love, 260; matchmaking fairs for, 
276; of Murias, 258-59; of Nayars, 244; 
polygamous, 7, 243, 244; reform of, 
132; in rural areas, 256, 259-60; tribal, 
209; up in the hierarchy, 261; in urban 
areas, 259; of widows, 258, 264-65, 
266, 270 

marriage ceremonies, 261-62; and caste, 
268-69; and consummation ceremo- 
nies, 262; Hindu, 147; interdepen- 
dence in, 284; tribal, 210; Zoroastrian, 
172 

Marshman, Joshua, 32 
martial races theory, 566-67; discred- 
ited, 568; recruitment based on, 568 



Maruti motor vehicles, 335 

Marwari language, 192 

mass transit, 346-49; buses, 349; in Cal- 
cutta, 346-49; light rail, 349; in 
Madras, 349; in New Delhi, 349; sub- 
ways, 346-49; trams, 349 

materiel (see also ballistic missiles; 
nuclear weapons): air force, 591; 
army, 583-84; from Britain, 563, 588, 
591; budget for, 583; Coast Guard, 
599; division of, following partition, 
569; domestic, 563, 580, 58-84; from 
France, 563, 591; from Germany, 563, 
588; from Russia, 546, 584; from 
Soviet Union, xlvii, 542-43, 544-45, 
563, 584, 588, 591; from Sweden, 563 

mathematics: ancient discoveries in, 
358-59; education, 361; in Gupta 
Empire, 13 

Mauryan Empire (326-184 B.C.), 9-11; 
army of, 10; Buddhism in, 130; diplo- 
matic missions of, 10; disintegration 
of, 11; government of, 10; origins of, 9 

Mayawati, 491 

Mayor's Court, 33-34; established, 33 
McMahon, Sir Arthur Henry, 72 
McMahon Line, 72, 532, 536 
media (see also newspapers; press), 499- 

503; broadcast, 501-3; print, 499-501 
Medical Nursing Service, 587 
Megasthenes, 10 

Meghalaya: rainfall in, 78; Scheduled 
Tribes in, 88; tensions of, with central 
government, 227; tribes in, 199, 200 

Mehta, Harshad, 473 

men: employment of, 288; freedoms of, 
249; initiation ceremonies for, 146-47, 
256; literacy rate of, 106, 113; names 
of, 284; prescribed roles for, 234, 263; 
relations of, with women, 249-50; 
social rank of, 247 

Menon, V.K. Krishna, 580-81 

metallurgy: discoveries in, 359, 360; 
research in, 372 

metals: import of, 322; government con- 
trol of, 330; price controls on, 305 

Methodist Church, 170; number mem- 
bers of, 171 

middle class, 278-79; consumption by, 
xl, 301-2; growth of, xl, 301; members 
of, 278; occupations of, 301; as per- 
centage of the population, xli, 278-79; 



825 



India: A Country Study 



population of, 278, 301; in urban 
areas, 288-89 

Middle East: guest workers in, 326; 
peacekeeping missions in, 556; rela- 
tions with, 537-40; trade with, 15 

migration {see also urban migration): to 
Assam, 196, 487, 610; of Banjaras, 206; 
of Jews, 173; to North America, xlviii; 
into tribal lands, 204 

military assistance: of foreign countries 
for Pakistan, 539; from Soviet Union, 
510 

military class, 278 

military cooperation: with Malaysia, 537; 
between Pakistan and United States, 
547; with Russia, xlix, 545, 589; with 
United States, xlix, 551, 552, 579, 589 

Military Intelligence, 602 

militaryjustice, 604-5 

military officers: British, 570; increase in, 
568; Indians in, under British, 567; 
qualifying exams for, 393; retirement 
age for, 592; training of, 584, 590; 
women as, 587, 590, 591 

military personnel: division of, follow- 
ing partition, 569 

military planning, 581 

military policy: and foreign policy, 517; 
formulation of, 580 

military power: erosion of, 564 

military training, 584-87, 590, 591 

millet, 384, 385, 407, 408 

Minakshi, 142; temple of, 142 

minerals: government control of, 304; in 
Jharkand, 219 

Minerva Mills case, 450 

mines: bauxite, 341; coal, 336; copper, 
341; fires in, 336; iron, 341; manga- 
nese, 341; nationalized, 220; rare 
earths, 341-42, 373; uranium, 341, 
373 

Minicoy Islands, 71 

Minimum Needs programme, 394 

mining and quarrying, xxxix, 300, 341- 
42; expansion of, 220; under five-year 
plans, 311; in Jharkand, 219, 220; as 
percentage of gross domestic product, 
299-300, 341; percentage of work 
force in, 325; problems with, 336; sci- 
entific and technical support for, 358 

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Devel- 
opment, 368; Department of Agricul- 



tural Research and Education, 368, 
394; Directorate of Marketing and 
Inspection, 423 

Ministry of Atomic Energy, 372-73; 
funding for, 365 

Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism: 
Department of Civil Aviation, 352 

Ministry of Defence, 369, 569 

Ministry of External Affairs, 510, 512-13; 
areas of operation in, 512-13; budget 
of, 514; Economic Coordination Unit, 
513; Economic Division, 513; foreign 
affairs under, 512; foreign policy mak- 
ing under, 512; functions of, 512; mis- 
sions abroad, 514; Policy Planning and 
Research Division, 513 

Ministry of Finance, 56; taxation under, 
313 

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 
100 

Ministry of Home Affairs: languages 
under, 195; law enforcementunder, 
613; Police Division, 613; Registrar 
General and Census Commissioner, 

85, 88 

Ministry of Human Resource Develop- 
ment: Department of Education, 104 

Ministry of Information and Broadcast- 
ing, 355; radio under, 356, 501; televi- 
sion under, 356, 501 

Ministry of Labour, 325 

Ministry of Railways, 345 

Ministry of Science and Technology, 
364, 368; Council of Scientific and 
Industrial Research (CSIR), 364, 365, 
369, 371-72; Department of Biotech- 
nology, 364, 368; Department of Sci- 
ence and Technology, 364; 
Department of Scientific and Indus- 
trial Research, 364; National 
Research and Development Corpora- 
don, 365, 366 

Ministry of Space: funding for, 365 

Ministry of State for Surface Transport, 
349-50; ports under, 351 

minorities: under constitution, 435 

Mirabai, 135 

Mising Autonomous Demand Commit- 
tee, 227 

Mising Bane Kebang. See Mising Greater 
Council 

Mising Greater Council (Mising Bane 



826 



Index 



Kebang), 227 

Missile Technology Control Regime, 549 

missionaries, Christian: activities of, 
xxxvi, 32; conversions by, 170; impact 
of, 32, 174, 210-11, 219; language 
under, 171, 210 

missions, Christian: schools of, 107, 210 

Mizo Hills, 70 

Mizo National Front, 61 1 

Mizoram: Buddhists in, 131; rural popu- 
lation of, 88; Scheduled Tribes in, 88; 
tensions of, with central government, 
227, 611; tribes in, 199, 200 

Mizo tribe: Christians in, 171; uprisings 
by, 52 

modernization, xxxviii, xl; and religion, 

120, 174 
Mohammad Shah, 360 
Mohenjo-daro, 4 

Monopolies and Restrictive practices Act 
(1970), 305-6, 330 

monsoons, 407; causes of, 77; depen- 
dence on, 383; failure of, 466; north- 
east, 77, 385, 397; patterns of, 77; 
southwest, 76-77, 384, 385, 397; 
unpredictability of, 300, 397 

Montagu, Edwin, 40 

motor vehicles {see also transportation), 
332-35, 350; accidents of, 286; exports 
of, 335; hazards of, 286; joint ventures, 
335; number of, 350; pollution caused 
by, 350; production of, 335 

Mount Abu, 128 

Mountbatten, Louis, 570, 579 

mountains: Himalyan, 68-69; in 
Indo-Gangetic Plain, 67 

Mount Everest, 69 

Mount Godwin-Austen (K2) , 69 

movies, 290; influence of, 290 

Mozambique: peacekeeping forces in, 
579 

Mughal Empire, 19-30; administrative 
system of, 21-23, 24, 218- 19; Africans 
under, 213-4; corruption under, 23; 
dissolved, 24- 25, 36; expansion 
under, xxxvi, 20-21, 23-24; language 
of, 188; reforms under, 23; religion 
under, 21 , 23; Sikh campaigns against, 
164; taxes under, 21; temples under, 
22; warriors under, 21; wars of, 24, 29; 
women under, 23; zamindars under, 
21 



Mughals, 19-23; expansion by, 20-21; 
invasion by, 20 

Muhammad (the Prophet), 155; succes- 
sion to, 156-57 

Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College 
{see also Aligarh Muslim University) , 
162; founded, 39 

Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force), 572 

Mumtaz Mahal, 24 

Munda language, 202 

Munda tribe: religious beliefs of, 168, 
169 

Murdock, Rupert, 502 

Muria tribe: family structure of, 258-59 

Murugan, 140 

Muslim courts. See courts, sharia 
Muslim jurisprudence: schools of, 156 
Muslim League, All-India: in elections of 
1937, 45; goals of, 40; leadership of, 
45; loyalty of, to British, 39, 40; origins 
of, 38-39, 39-40; relations of, with 
Congress, xlvi, 40, 44; reorganized, 45; 
and world War II, 45-46 
Muslim revival, 39 

Muslims {see also Islam): Africans as, 214; 
chastity of women, 270; defined, 155- 
56; diversity among, 39; education of, 
39, 107; food customs of, 269; and for- 
eign policy, 515; fundamentalist, 176, 
620; in government, 39; kinship 
groupings of, 245; languages of, 192, 
196; in middle class, 279; number of, 
119, 155; as percentage of population, 
155; political affiliation of, 463, 468, 
471; public worship of, 157; reforms 
by, 34; as refugees, 46 

Muslim shrines, 159-61 

Muslim United Front, 494 

Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on 
Divorce) Bill), 496-97 

Mysore: British acquisition of, 31 

Naga Hills, 70 

Nagaland: Scheduled Tribes in, 88; ten- 
sions of, with central government, 
227, 611; tribes in, 199, 200 
Naga tribes, 88; Christians in, 171 
Nagpur: airport, 354; annexed by Brit- 
ish, 32 

Naicker, E.V. Ramaswamy, 485 
Nalanda monastery, 1 30 



827 



India: A Country Study 



Namibia: election supervisors in, 579 
Nanak, Guru, 162 
Nan da Devi, 69 

Napoleonic Wars (1796-1815), 30 

Narayan, Jayaprakash (J. P.): civil disobe- 
dience under, 54; as Congress leader, 
43; in elections of 1977, 54; political 
activities of, 467 

Narmada River, 67, 76 

Nasik: rainfall in, 75 

Nasser, Gamel Abdul, 538 

Nath, Nagendra, 361 

National Agricultural Cooperative Mar- 
keting Federation of India, 422 

National AIDS Control Programme, 98 

National Bank for Agriculture and Rural 
Development, 420 

National Cadet Corps, 600-1 

National Centre for Science Informa- 
tion, 370 

National Centre of the Government of 
India for Advanced Study and Funda- 
mental Research in Nuclear Science 
and Mathematics, 376 

National Commission on Agriculture: 
forestry under, 414 

National Conference party, li, 486, 493; 
alliance with Congress (I) , 494, 522; in 
Jammu and Kashmir government, 494 

National Council of Educational 
Research and Training, 104 

National Council on Science and Tech- 
nology, 363, 364 

National Dairy Development Board, 
412-13,426 

National Defence Academy, 584, 590 

National Development Council, 309 

National Facility for Animal Tissue and 
Cell Culture, 368 

National Filaria Control Programme, 95 

National Forest Policy, 414 

National Front, 1, 58; government, 484, 
486; members of, 477; opposition of, 
to Congress, 474; in Parliament, 471 

National Health Policy, 99, 100; criti- 
cisms of, 99 

National Human Rights Commission, 
606-7 

National Institute of Immunobiology, 

368 

National Institute of Science, Technol- 
ogy, and Development Studies, 372 



nationalization: of banks, xxxix, 52, 304, 
316, 317, 450, 466; of insurance, 304; 
of mines, 220; under Indira Gandhi, 
52 

National Leprosy Control Programme, 
95 

National Leprosy Education Pro- 
gramme, 95-96 

National Malaria Eradication Pro- 
gramme, 95 

National Metallurgical Laboratory, 372 

National Physical Laboratory, 372 

National Police Academy, 613 

National Policy on Education (1986), 64, 
104; goals of, 111; nonformal educa- 
tion under, 112 

National Population Policy, 90 

National Programme for the Control of 
Blindness, 96 

National Programme of Fish Seed Devel- 
opment, 417 

National Remote Sensing Agency, 373 

National Rifles, 598, 599 

National Rural Employment Pro- 
gramme, 308, 394 

national security, 516-18; challenges to, 
620; China as threat to, 515, 517; and 
Nepal, 530; Pakistan as threat to, 515, 
517; and Sri Lanka, 527; structure of, 
579-83; United States as threat to, 
547, 548 

National Security Act (1980), 440, 606 
National Security Amendment Act 

(1984), 440, 606 
National Security Guards, 598 
National Seeds Corporation, 400 
National Socialist Council of Nagaland, 

611 

National Telecommunications Policy 

(1994), 354 
National Volunteer Organisation. See 

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 
Natural Resource Management System, 

373 

Nausari: Parsis in, 173 

navy, 587-90; air arm, 588; area com- 
mands, 590; British officers in, 570; 
budget for, 583; buildup of, 536; chief 
of staff, 569, 589-90; diversity in, 594; 
educational qualification for, 393; 
expansion of, xlviii, 564, 568, 588; 
fleet of, 588-89; insignia, 595; intelli- 



828 



Index 



gence, 604; internal security missions 
of, 564; joint exercises with United 
States, 551; judge advocate general's 
department, 605; materiel, 588; mod- 
ernization of, 564, 588-89; origins of, 
567, 587; ranks, 595; rearmament of, 
588; recruitment, 592; surveillance 
by, 577; training of, 590; uniforms, 
595; women in, 590 

Navy Act of 1957, 604 

Nayars: family structure of, 244; mar- 
riage of, 244; women, 244 

Nehru, Jawaharlal, 358, 394; armed 
forces under, 563; arrested, 45; back- 
ground of, 50; as Congress leader, 43; 
death of, 51; economic planning 
under, xxxviii, 49, 298; foreign policy 
of, xlvii, 51, 509, 541; government 
plan of, 433; legacy of, 50-51; non- 
alignment under, 518; President's 
Rule invoked by, 439; as prime minis- 
ter, xlii, 49, 50; reforms under, xxxviii, 
50 

Nehru, Motilal: constitution drafted by, 
44 

neighborhoods: solidarity in, 290; urban, 
289-90; village, 282 

Nepal: aid to, 321, 526; border with, 
xlviii, 63, 71, 74, 516; citizens of, in 
India, 528; economy of, 528; Gorkhas 
from, 223, 592; materiel acquired by, 
529-30; membership of, in SAARC, 
559; relations with, 509, 510, 528-30; 
security relations with, 530; as zone of 
peace, 529 

Nepali language, 182, 224 

Nestorian Church, 170 

Netherlands: in Aid-to-india Consor- 
tium, 319; scientific developments 
under, 360; traders from, 28, 211 

Neutral Nations Repatriation Commis- 
sion, 556 

New Delhi, 290; air pollution, 350; as 
capital, 40; IIT campus in, 370; plans 
for, 40; population density of, 285; 
public transportation in, 349, 350; 
women in, 291 

New Mangalore, port of, 350 

news agencies, 500 

newspapers {see also press; media): in 
English, 193, 499, 500; Gandhi's, 42; 
Indian-language, 499, 500; languages 



of, 198-99, 499, 500; number of, 499- 
500 

Nhava Sheva, port of, 350-51 

Nicaragua: peacekeeping forces in, 579 

Nixon, Richard M., 547 

Nizamabad: rainfall in, 75 

Non-Aligned Movement, 557-58; mem- 
bership in, xlvii, 518; summits of, 537 

nonalignment, xlviii, 509, 515, 518-19, 
553-54; extent of, 518; under Nehru, 
518; origins of, 518; principles of, 518; 
with pro-Soviet orientation, xlviii, 
515, 541; and relations with United 
States, 546; and reputation, 509-10 

nongovernmental organizations, 503-4; 
demands of, 432, 503-4; funding of, 
503; number of, 503 

nonviolence (ahimsa), 10 

Norway: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 319 

nuclear power: research organizations 
in, 372-73, 376 

Nuclear Power Corporation of India, 
340 

nuclear power plants, 300, 339, 340-41, 
373; capacity, 340; construction of, 
340-41; locations of, 340; safety prob- 
lems with, 340; scientific and technical 
support for, 358 

nuclear weapons, xlvii, xlix, li, 511, 551, 
601-2, 620; acquisition of, 515; deto- 
nation of, xlvii, 601; foreign reaction 
to, 545; of Pakistan, xlvii, xlix, 524, 
551; program, 517, 551 

Nurjahan, 23 



occupation: of Brahmans, 271, 283; and 
caste, 263, 267, 271, 283; of middle 
class, 301; in rural areas, 283; of 
Sweepers, 237, 263-64; of Thakurs, 
283 

Officers' Training Academy, 587 
Official Languages Act (1963), 195 
Ohrmazd, 172 

oil, petroleum {see also petroleum), 337- 
39; discoveries of, 337, 338; earnings 
from, 330; exploration, 337-38; fields, 
337; imports of, 337, 538; investment 
in, 306; production, 337; reserves, 337 

oil, vegetable: availability of, 382; price 
controls on, 305 

Oil and Natural Gas Commission, 337 



829 



India: A Country Study 



Oil India Limited, 337 

oil price shocks: and fertilizer prices, 
400-401; of 1973. 54, 299, 311, 321, 
324, 467, 538; of 1979, 324; of 1990, 
297, 302 

oilseeds, 385, 409; area sown in. 409; 
exports of, 382; imports of, 382, 409; 
prices, 404; production of, 382, 384, 
407, 409; research on. 368; shortages 
of, 303 

Oldenburg, Philip. 253 

Oman: gas pipeline from, 338 

Ootv. S^Udhagamandalam 

OPEC. See Organization of the Petro- 
leum Exporting Countries 

Operation Blackboard, 112 

Operation Flood. 412-13, 426 

Oraon tribe: religious beliefs of. 168. 169 

Organization of the Petroleum Export- 
ing Countries (OPEC). 467, 538 

Original Book. SeeAdi Granth 

Orissa (state): agricultural growth in, 
404; coal in, 336; droughts in. 75; edu- 
cation in. 112; elections in. 475; elec- 
tricity in. 339; floods in, 75; forests in, 
413; land reform in. 390; mining in, 
342; political representation in, 52; 
poverty in, 301; roads in, 349; Santal 
in. 168; tribes in. 200; urban areas in, 
86 

Oriya language, 182; as lingua franca. 

202; native speakers of, 182 
Osmania University 216 
Oudh: annexed by British, 32. 36 
Outer Himalayas, 69 
Outreach Society. Tablighi Jamaat 

Pachmarhi: Tata Institute facility in, 376 

Pahari language, 221 

Pakistan: border with. 63. 71, 72, 516, 
524; claim of, to Jammu and Kashmir, 
xlix, 71, 494, 620; competition with, 
for influence, 540-41; conflicts with, 
xlvi. li. 76. 620; defense industry of, 
5 70; fertility rate in. 93; foreign mili- 
tary assistance for. xlix. 539; idea of, 
45; membership of. in SAARC. 559; 
negotiations with, 520. 523; nuclear 
weapons of, xlvii, xlix, 524, 550, 551; 
origins of, 46; princely states in, 49; 
Rao's visit to, 523; refugees from, 46, 



572; refugees in, 46; relations of, with 
China, xlvii-xlviii, 517, 533; relations 
of, with United States, xlvii, xlix, 51, 
517, 523, 539, 546, 547, 550; secession 
of east wing from, 5 71-72; as threat, 
xlvii, 515, 517; trade with, 524; wars 
with, xlvii, 51, 52-53, 71-72, 299, 310, 
493, 510, 519, 520, 521, 533, 563, 570- 
74 

Pakistan-India relations, 51, 56, 509, 510, 
517, 519-25; conflicting ideologies in, 
519; international reaction to, 542; 
and Jammu and Kashmir, 511, 519-22, 

542 

Pakistan Resolution, 45 

Paleolithic Age, 4 

Pali language, 186 

Pallava Kingdom (300-888), 14 

pan ch ay at, 433, 458-60, 618; constitu- 
tional status, 460; efforts to revive, 
459-60, 470; elections to, 225-26; 
legal disputes heard by, 453; low castes 
in, 285; organization of, 458-59; and 
land reform, 391; present-day, 225-26, 
284-85; traditional, 270, 284; women 
in, 285 

Panch Shila, 518, 519, 534; and Soviet 
Union, 541; and Tibet, 532 

Pandharpur: pilgrimage to, 152 

pandits: in British legal system, 33 

Pandya Kingdom, 12. 14 

Panini, 185, 359 

Paradip. port of, 350 

paramilitary forces, 598-600; deploy- 
ments of, 612-13; functions of, 598; 
human rights violations by, 565, 606- 
7; number of personnel in, 598 

Pardesi Synagogue, 173 

Pardhan tribe: education in, 208-9; reli- 
gion in, 210 

Paris Peace Conference on Cambodia, 
537 

Parliament, xliii; debate in, 445; disputes 
of, with Supreme Court, 449-51; dis- 
solved, 443; elections for, 443; foreign 
policy under. 514; members of, 
arrested, 445; powers of, 443, 457 

Parshvanatha, 126 

Parsis (see also Zoroastrianism) , 171; 

immigration of, 211; number of, 171; 

women, 171-72 
partition, xlvi; impact of, on armed 



830 



Index 



forces, 569; and national integration, 
46-50; plans for, 46; refugees from, 
xlvi, 298 

Party of Society's Majority. See Bahujan 

Samaj party 
Party of the Adaman i-Bodied. See 

Bajrang Dal 
Parvati, 139-40; incarnations of, 139-40; 

worship of, 142 
Pataliputra, 13 

Patel, Vallabhbhai: as Congress leader, 
43 

Pathans: in first Indo-Pakistan war, 570; 

Mughal war with, 24 
patron-client relationship, 272 
Pawan Hans helicopter service, 354 
peacekeeping operations, 556, 563-64, 

576-79, 599 
Peace of Paris (1763), 29 
Peacock Throne, 25 

peasants, xli, 386; under British, 33; 

uprisings by, 24, 482 
penal system {see also prison system), 

618-19 

Peninsula region, 64, 70-71; agriculture 
in, 385-86; coastal plain of, 71; crop 
and livestock patterns in, 383; eleva- 
tion of, 70; monsoons in, 385 

Peninsular Plateau. SoeDeccan Plateau 

People of India, 182, 192 

People's Liberation Army, 611 

People's Front. See Janata Morcha 

People's Party. See Janata Dal 

People's Union for civil Liberties, 606 

People's United Democratic Front, 606 

People's War Group, 218 

Permanent Settlement system. Se<?zamin- 
dari system 

Perry, William J., 552 

Persia: influence of, 23 

Persian Gulf states: guest workers in, 
283, 302, 326, 538; oil from, 538 

Persian Gulf War: impact of, 302, 326, 
513, 538; response to, xlix, 515, 539- 
40; television coverage of, 502 

Persian language: as language of instruc- 
tion, 34 

petroleum {see also oil): imports of, 322, 

332; research in, 372 
pharmaceuticals: import of, 322; price 

controls on, 305; research, 369 
philosophy: religious influences on, 119 



Physical Research Laboratory, 373 
pilgrimages, 149-53; process of, 152-53; 

to Tibet, 533; as tourism, 152 
Planning Commission, 50, 309, 457; 

established, 309; population estimates, 

81; science and technology under, 

364; role of, 309 
plantations: percentage of work force in, 

325 

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, 375 

police, 612-16; armed, 614; arrest guide- 
lines, 452; candidates, 612; chain of 
command in, 614-15; civil 
(unarmed), 614; corruption of, 615; 
human rights abuses by, 606-7; inef- 
fectiveness of, 432, 598; inspector gen- 
eral, 613; national, 612-13; 
organization of, 613-14; paramilitary 
assistance to, 598; pay of, 615; rape by, 
291, 606; repression by, 493; 
state-level, 613; uniforms, 615-16; vic- 
tims of, 452; women in, 615; working 
conditions of, 615 

Police Act of 1861, 613 

political candidates, 1; financing of, 470; 
killing of, 454, 455, 463; variation 
among, 462-63 

political demonstrations: by Dalits, 276, 
620; against Hindi, 51; in Jammu and 
Kashmir, 494, 522 

political parties (see also under individual 
parties), 463-91, 504; caste-based, 488- 
91, 505; constituencies of, 463; Hindu, 
516; number of, 462; platforms of, 
463; regional, 484-88, 505; unrespon- 
siveness of, 505 

political unrest, xlv, 620; in Andhra 
Pradesh, 216, 483; in Assam, 564; 
attempts to quell, 432, 611-12; in 
Bihar, 483; in Gorkhaland, 224-25; 
ineffectiveness of police against, 432; 
over partition of Bengal, 39; by peas- 
ants, 24, 482; in Punjab, 52, 56, 72, 
398, 440, 524, 564; in Sindh, 524; by 
tribes, xxxvii, 52, 611; in Uttarakhand, 
222, 223; in West Bengal, 483; by 
women's movement, 291 

political violence {see also riots): over 
affirmative action, xxxviii, 302; in 
Andhra Pradesh, 214-15, 216, 217, 
218; over Babri Masjid mosque, 149, 
176, 302, 497; against British, 39; in 



831 



India: A Country Study 



elections, 454, 455, 463; injammu and 
Kashmir, 494, 522, 524, 564; against 
Mandal Commission report, 222-23, 
274-75, 477; in Punjab, 56, 492-93; 
reduction of, 228, 229; in Uttara- 
khand, 223 
politicians: arrests of, 439, 467, 476; cor- 
ruption of, 1, 432, 433, 498; incitement 
of religious and ethnic tensions, 496, 
498 

pollution (ritual), 145, 235-40; adhering 
to rules of, 238-39, 275-76; and caste, 
235-40; following birth, 236; following 
death, 148. 236, 264; in women, 236 

polygamy, 243; in Jammu and Kashmir, 
243; of Xavars, 244; in Uttar Pradesh, 
243 

Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) : teachers in, 

107; trading post at, 28 
Pongal festival. 154 

population: age distribution in. 89; in 
Bangalore, 285; of Bombay. 285; of 
Buddhists. 131; of Calcutta, 285; of 
Christians, 170. 171; distribution of, 
82, 85; of Goans. 211; in Hyderabad, 
285; ofjains, 127, 128; of Jews, 174; in 
Madras, 285; of Muslims, 155; of Par- 
sis, 171; of poor, 279, 301; of Roman 
Catholics, 170; rural, 85. 88; of Sched- 
uled Castes, 88, 268; of Scheduled 
Tribes, 88, 181; in Sikkim, 455; of 
tribal members, 167, 199, 200-201; in 
Union Territory of Delhi, 285; urban, 
85, 86; in Uttar Pradesh, 455 

population count: in 1991, 63, 81; in 
1995, 63, 181; projected, xxxv, 63, 88- 
89, 292 

population density, 82; and farm size, 
386; of New Delhi, 285 

population fractions: Austroasiatic lan- 
guage speakers, 187; of Backward 
Classes, 274. 490; bilinguals in. 192, 
198; Buddhists in. 119; Christians in, 
120, 170; Dalits in, 490; elite class in, 
xl, 279; Hindus in, 119; Jains in, 119; 
Jews in, 120; middle class in, xli, 278- 
79; Muslims in, 119, 155; Parsis in, 
120; in poverty, 63, 279, 301; Sched- 
uled Castes in, 268. 274. 490; Sikhs in. 
120; tribal members in, 199; in urban 
areas, 285; in villages, 233, 276; 
Sino-Tibetan language speakers, 187 



population statistics: birth rate, 82; death 
rate, 82; fertility rate, 93, 254; growth 
rate, 63, 81, 82, 89-90, 91, 393; infant 
mortality rate, 93, 94, 252; life expect- 
ancy, 93, 94, 300; mortality rate, 94; 
sex ratio, 93, 252-53 

ports, 350-51; foreign investments in, 
351; profits from, 351; traffic at, 351; 
upgrades needed, 342 

Portugal: explorers from, xxxvi, 27; 
immigrants from, 211; influence of, 
18; missionaries from, xxxvi, 170; rela- 
tions with, 542; scientific develop- 
ments under, 360; traders from, xxxvi, 
30 

postal savings banks, 317 

Postal Service, 462; employment in, 212; 

introduced, 34-35; SAARC program 

for, 559 

poverty, xxxviii; estimates of, 94; failure 
to reduce, xl-xli, 300-301; increase in, 
63; line, xl, 301; percentage of popula- 
tion in, 63, 279, 301; population in, 
279, 301 

poverty, programs to combat, 307-9, 
312; and food self-sufficiency, 307; 
Green Revolution, 412; state govern- 
ment role in, 309 
Prakrits, 185; evolution of, 186 
Prasad, Rajendra: as Congress leader, 43 
Prasar Bharati (Indian Broadcasting) 

Act), 501, 502 
Premadasa, Ranasinghe, 527-28, 564, 
577 

Presbyterian Church, 170 

president (see also executive branch), 
xliii, 446-48; as commander of armed 
forces, 446; powers of, 441, 446; term 
of, 446 

President's Rule, xliii, xliv, 456, 457, 476; 
Assam under, 488; under constitution, 
438; Gujarat under, 54; Jammu and 
Kashmir under. 438, 487, 494, 521; 
Kerala under, 482; Punjab under, 492, 
610; Rajasthan under, 52; Tamil Nadu 
under, 54 

press (see also media; newspapers), 499- 
501; censored, 445, 500; freedom of, 
499, 500; government controls on, 
500-501; growth of. 499-500 

Pressler Amendment, 550 

Press Trust of India, 500 



832 



Index 



Preventive Detention Act, 439 

prices: agricultural, 381; controls on, 
304, 305; for food, 307, 310, 403, 424, 
467; increases in, 303, 307, 310, 318; 
supports for, 381; stability of, 318 

priests (see also Brahmans) , 271 

prime minister, xliii, 448-49; appoint- 
ments by, 456; portfolios of, 448; pow- 
ers of, 448; role of, in foreign affairs, 
511 

Prime Minister, Office of the: concentra- 
tion of power in, 431, 433, 511; covert 
operations by, 511; under Indira Gan- 
dhi, 448, 511; under Rajiv Gandhi, 
448, 511; members of, 448; under Rao, 
449; Research and Analysis Wing, 511, 
602-4; Science Advisory Council, 363; 
science and technology under, 363; 
under Shastri, 511 

princely states: distribution of, 49 

Prisoners Act of 1900, 618 

Prisons Act of 1894, 618 

prison system, 618-19; conditions in, 
618-19; human rights abuses in, 619; 
women in, 618 

private sector: employment in, 325; 
investment, 56, 299, 306, 312; manu- 
facture of consumer goods by, 304; 
spending on research and develop- 
ment, 366 

privatization, 312 

production: controls on, 304 

Project for Community Action in Family 
Planning, 92 

Prophet. See Muhammad 

prostitutes: child, 291; infected with HIV, 
99 

Protestantism (see also under individual 
denominations): denominations of, 
170-71; members of, 170-71; mission- 
aries, 170 

Provincial Armed Constabulary, 598, 614 
Provisional Government of Azad India 

(Free India), 568 
Provisional Jharkhand Area Autono- 
mous Council, 221 
Public Distribution System, 424; food 

grains supplied by, 424 
public enterprises: sale of shares in, 306 
public sector {see also government): 
defense industries in, 329-30; employ- 
ment in, 302, 325; industrial sector in, 



329; services sector in, 304 

Pulicat: as Dutch trading post, 28 

pulses, 385; area sown in, 407, 408; avail- 
ability of, 382; harvesting methods for, 
403; prices, 404; production of, 381, 
382,384, 407, 408,410-11 

Pune: airport, 354; rainfall in, 75; Tata 
Institute facility in, 376 

Punjab: British acquisition of, 31; ety- 
mology of, 68; fencing of border in, 
72; regionalist movement in, 214; Sikh 
influence in, 163; Sikh shrines in, 166 

Punjab (state), xliv; agricultural growth 
in, 404; elections in, 475; fertilizer 
consumption in, 400; Green Revolu- 
tion in, 411-12, 607-8; human rights 
violations in, 565; irrigation in, 407; 
land reform in, 390; political repre- 
sentation in, 52; political unrest in, 
xlv, 52, 56, 72, 398, 440, 491-93, 524, 
564, 605, 607-10, 620; population 
growth rate in, 93; poverty in, 301; 
under President's Rule, 492, 610; 
roads in, 349; secessionist movement 
in, 55, 228, 516; Sikhism in, xliv, 121, 
163, 166, 167; terrorism in, 167; vio- 
lence in, 56, 492-93; water distribu- 
tion in, 491 

Punjabi language, 182; mutual intelligi- 
bility of, with Hindi and Urdu, 184; 
native speakers of, 182; as regional 
language, 197 

Punjab Kesari, 500 

Punjab Plain, 67, 68; irrigation of, 68; 

urban areas in, 86 
Puranas, 5-6, 149 

purdah: Hindu, 248; Muslim, 248, 250; 

in rural areas, 250-51 
Puri: Hindu seat of learning at, 132 
purity (ritual), 145, 235-40; and caste, 

235-40; following rules of, 238-39; 

physical, 236; ritual, 236 

Qatar: gas pipeline from, 338 
qazis: in British legal system, 33 
Qinghai-Xizang Plateau 
Qogir Feng. See K2 
Quran, 16 

Radhasoami Satsang movement, 177 



833 



India: A Country Study 



radio, 501; foreign broadcast service, 
356; government control of, 356, 501; 
languages of, 198-99, 356; number of 
receivers, 356 

Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 540 

railroads, xxxvi, 300, 342, 345-46; 
bridges, 345; development of, 345-46; 
employment in, 212, 345; employee 
strike, 54; energy consumed by, 339; 
equipment production industry, 346; 
fares, 346; under five-year plans, 345- 
46; freight transport on, 342, 345; gov- 
ernment control of, xxxix, 304; intro- 
duced, 34-35; passenger transport on, 
345; route length, 345; stations, 345; 
strike, 54, 439; track, 345; trains, 345; 
zones, 345 

Railway Board, 345 

Railway Protection Force, 598 

rainfall (see also climate): and agricul- 
ture, 381, 397; in Brahmaputra River 
basin, 75; in Deccan Plateau, 78; and 
farm size, 386; in Godavari River 
basin, 75; in Great Indian Desert, 384; 
in Indo-Gangetic Plain, 68, 384; in 
Karnataka, 77; in Kerala, 77; in 
Krishna River basin, 75; in Meghalaya, 
78; from northeast monsoon, 77; in 
offshore islands, 71; in Tamil Nadu, 77 

Rajagopalachari, C: as Congress leader, 
43 

rajas, 8 

Rajasthan (state) , 52; agricultural growth 
in, 404; education in, 112; elections 
in, 475, 481; electricity in, 339; farms 
in, 386; Hindi in, 191; Jains in, 127, 
128; marriage in, 256; mining in, 341; 
nuclear power plant in, 340; political 
parties in, 481; roads in, 349; sex ratio 
in, 253; tribes in, 200; urbanization in, 
87 

Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, 340 
Rajasthan Canal. See Indira Gandhi 
Canal 

Rajputs, 16; attacked by Mughals, 20; 

kinship of, 245 
Rajya Sabha, 444; elections for, 444; 

functions of, 441; members of, 444; 

number of seats in, 434, 444; powers 

of, 441; sessions of, 444 
Raksha Bandhan festival, 246 
Ram (Rama), 8, 136; birthday of, 154 



Ram, Jagjivan, 447, 476; in Janata gov- 
ernment, 476-77 

Ram, Kanshi, 490 

Rama. See Ram 

Ramachandran, M.G, 485 

Ramakrishna renunciants, 175 

Ramalingesvara Temple: pilgrimage to, 
152 

Raman, Chandrasekhara Venkata 

(C.V.), 361, 370 
Ramanavami, 154 
Raman Effect, 361 
Raman-Nath Theory, 361 
Raman Research Institute, 361, 370 
Ramaswamy, V., 451 

Ramayana (Travels of Rama), xxxv, 8-9, 

15, 136, 142 
Ram Das, Guru, 163 
Ramjanmabhumi, 9 

Ramjanmabhumi Temple (see also Babri 
Masjid), 471, 481; desire to build, 477, 
480-81,497 

Ramsay, James Andrew Brown (Marquess 
of Dalhousie), 31-32, 34-5 

Rana Sangha, 20 

Rann of Kutch, 67; dispute over, 72 
Rao, P.V. Narasimha, li, 364; corruption 
charges against, 1, 474, 498; foreign 
relations under, 535; no-confidence 
motion against, 474; Office of the 
Prime Minister under, 449, 512; per- 
sonal advisers to, 512; portfolios held 
by, 449; President's Rule invoked by, 
439; as prime minister, 445, 473, 525; 
visit to Central Asia, 540-41; visit to 
Iran, 540; visit to Pakistan, 523; visit to 
Russia, 545; visit to United States, 552 
Rao, N.T. Rama, 217, 485-86 
Rashtrakuta Kingdom (753-973), 14 
Rashtriya Indian Military College, 584 
Rashtriya Rifles, 598, 599 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS — 
National Volunteer Organisation), 
149, 175, 478-79; banned, 479; expan- 
sion of, 480; founded, 478-79; mem- 
bers in Congress, 479 
Ravana, 136 

Ravi River, 68; irrigation from, 68 
Ray, Prafulla Chandra, 362 
Reagan, Ronald, 548 
real estate: as percentage of gross domes- 
tic product, 300 



834 



Index 



Reddy, M. Chenna, 216, 217 
Reddy, Neelam Sanjiva, 466; as presi- 
dent, 447 

reform: under Akbar, 23; of Congress 
(I), 56; economic, 56; under Rajiv 
Gandhi, 56; by Mohandas Gandhi, 42- 
43; by Hindus, 34; in Lucknow Pact, 
40; by Muslims, 43; under Nehru, 50; 
regarding Dalits, 50 

Reformed Church, 170 

refugees, 54; from Bangladesh, 53, 85, 
299, 526; from Burma, 85; distribution 
of, 82, 85; Hindu, xlvi, 46; from India, 
46; Muslim, xlvi, 46; number of, 298; 
from Pakistan, xlvi, 46, 572; resettle- 
ment of, 82, 298; from Sri Lanka, 85, 
528; from Tibet, 85, 131, 532; in West 
Bengal, 572 

regionalism (see also under individual 
regionalist movements), 181, 214-29; 
effects of, 228; and local languages, 
229; and national unity, 228-29, 516; 
outlook for, 228-29 

Regulating Act (1773), 32 

reincarnation, 123-24, 164, 266; break- 
ing the cycle of, 124, 164 

religion (see also under individual sects): of 
Akbar, 23; ancient origins of, 119, 
121-25; Brahman ical, 14; diversity of, 
125; in Gupta Empire, 13; influences 
of, xxxvii, 119; introduction of new, 
120; monastic, 125-33; polytheism in, 
121-22, 134; and Sanskritization, 14; 
spread of, 14, 119; tribal, 120, 167-69 

religious diversity, 1 20 

religious festivals: as closed holidays, 
153-54; of Hindus, 23, 128, 136, 138, 
153-54; interdependence in, 272-73, 
284; of Jains, 128; of Muslims, 128; as 
restricted holidays, 154 

religious fundamentalism, 121, 176 

religious minorities: political activities 
of, 431 

religious persecution: of Jains, 23; of 

Sikhs, 24 
religious separatism: in Punjab, 52 
religious tensions: causes of, 496; in 

tribes, 221 
religious tolerance, 120 
religious violence: in Punjab, 56 
remittances, 283, 323, 324, 326 
renunciants: Hindu, 132-33, 139; 



Ramakrishna, 175 
research and development {see also sci- 
ence; technology), 362; in agriculture, 
391, 393, 394-96; atomic, 290; fund- 
ing for, 358, 358; government agencies 
for, 365; government support for, 50, 
358, 363-68; and industry, 377; infra- 
structure, 363-65; investment in, 57; 
as percentage of gross domestic prod- 
uct, 365; private-sector spending on, 
366; policy, 363-65; quality of, 377; 
resource allocation, 365; role of uni- 
versities in, 366; specialized institutes 
for, 366 

Reserve Bank of India: founded, 316; 
functions of, 316; nationalized, 316 

Reserve Forest Areas, 227 

rice, 384, 385; area sown in, 407, 411; 
exports of, 425; farming areas, 75; 
prices, 404; production, 382, 384, 
407-8, 411; research on, 368, 427 

riots {see also political violence), xlv-xlvi; 
anti-Sikh, 176, 492, 610; over Babri 
Masjid, xlvi, 497; deaths in, 222-23, 
274-75, 477, 492; on Direct Action 
Day, 46; over food price increases, 307, 
310; following Indira Gandhi's assassi- 
nation, 55; Hindu-Muslim, xlv-xlvi, 
176, 477, 495, 524, 607; language, 195, 
196; against Mandal Commission 
report, 222-23, 274-75, 477; religious, 
xlvi, 176, 497 

rivers, 74-76; flooding of, 74; in 
Indo-Gangetic Plain, 67; types of, 74 

roads, xxxvi, 35, 349-50; construction of, 
306, 349-50; deterioration of, 342, 
349; freight transport on, 342; high- 
ways, 349; maintenance of, 342, 349- 
50; network of, 349; passenger traffic 
on, 349 

Rockefeller Foundation, 410, 426 
Roland, Alan, 254 

Roberts, Frederick Sleigh, Earl of Kanda- 
har, Pretoria, and Waterford, 566 

Robinson, Francis, 463 

Robinson, George, Marquis of Ripon, 37 

Rodrigues, Sunith Francis, 564, 605 

Roman Empire: trade with, 12 

RowlattActs (Black Acts) (1919), 41; 
satyagraha against, 42 

Rowlatt Commission, 41 

Roy, Ram Mohan, 34 



835 



India: A Country Study 



Royal Commission on Agriculture, 391 

Royal Indian .Air Force, 567 

Royal Indian Navy, 567, 587 

RSS. S^Rashtriva Swavamsevak Sangh 

Rubin, Robert E., 552 

rural areas {see also villages): banking in, 
300, 317, 420-21; Dalits in, 275; devel- 
opment in, 312, 396-97, 420, 559; 
electrification of, 339; employment in, 
311, 331; farm size in, 386; health care 
in, 102; housing in, 335; infrastructure 
of, 420; interdependence in, 272-73, 
283-85; landless families in, 388; lan- 
guages in, 194; marriage in, 256; pop- 
ulation in, 85, 88; poverty in, 43, 301; 
purdah in, 250-51; workers in, 328, 
388-89 

rural development, 312; goals of, 396; 
problems with, 396-97; SAARC pro- 
gram for, 559 

Rural Landless Employment Guarantee 
Program, 308, 394 

Russia {see also Soviet Union): expansion 
by, 30; exports to, 331; materiel from, 
546; military cooperation with, 545, 
589; relations with, 541, 5 44 - 4 6; scien- 
tific cooperation with, 545; state visits 
to, 544; trade with, 545 

ryotwari settlement system: under British, 
33 



sadhus (holy men), 279, 280 

sadhvis (holy women), 279 

Saha, Meghnad (M.N.), 362 

SaheU (Woman Friend) , 291 

Sai Baba, 133 

Saikia, Hiteshwar, 487 

Samajwadi Janata Dal, 447 

Samajwadi Janata Partv: decline of, 478; 

formed, 478 
Samajwadi Partv (Socialist Party). 431, 

490; constituency of, 472; in Janata 

Party, 476 
Samudragupta. 13 
Sangam works, 12 
sanitation services: access to, 96 
Sanjan: Parsis in, 173 
Sanskrit, xxxvii, 182; common (Prakrits), 

185, 186; grammar and phonetics of, 

185, 359; literary, 185; spoken, 5, 186 
Sanskritization, xxxvii, 14, 272 



Santal tribe, 168, 169, 202; geographic 

distribution of, 200; in Jharkhand 

Movement, 218; population of, 200 
Santal religion, 168; life-q'cle rituals of, 

168; followers of, 168; spirits in, 168 
San Thorn Cathedral, 169 
Santoshi Ma, 144-45 
Sarabhai family, 242 
Sardar Sarovar Dam, 399 
Sarvodava movement, 467 
Satara: annexed by British, 32 
Satavahana Kingdom, 11-12 
satellites, 375; launch vehicle program, 

375, 545; weather, 375 
sati, 7, 265-66; outlawed, 23, 33; protests 

against, 291 
satyagraha (civil disobedience), xli, 42; 

against Government of India Act, 42; 

against Indira Gandhi, 54; against 

Rowlatt Acts, 42; against salt tax, 44; 

against Sardar Sarovar Dam, 399; 

against World War II, 45 
SatyaSai Baba, 133 

Saudi Arabia: oil from, 538; relations of, 
with Pakistan, 539; relations with, 538 

Sayeed, Mufti Mohammed, 494 

Sayvid Dynasty (1414-51), 16 

scandals: Bofors, 57-58; involving Rajiv 
Gandhi, 56, 57-58, 470, 498; involving 
Rao, 1, 474, 498; spy, 57; stock trading, 
473-74 

Scheduled Areas: under constitution, 
434 

Scheduled Castes {see also Dalits), 267- 
68; affirmative action for, 110, 274, 
302; in civil service, 461; under consti- 
tution, 435; conversion of, to Bud- 
dhism, 131, 176-77; conversion of, to 
Christianity, 171, 176-77; conversion 
of, to Islam, 176-77; definition of 
members of, 200, 437; discrimination 
against, 271, 503; geographic distribu- 
tion of, 88; government seats reserved 
for. 436-37, 438; literacy of, 274; as 
percentage of population, 268, 274, 
490; political activities of, 503; politi- 
cal affiliation of, 463, 468, 471, 472, 
481, 490, 505; population of, 88, 268; 
in village panchayats, 285 

Scheduled Languages, 182, 184, 224; 
instruction in, 194; number of, 455 

Scheduled Tribes, 200; affirmative 



836 



Index 



action for, 110; Africans in, 214; in 
civil service, 461; classification of, 206; 
under constitution, 434, 435; conver- 
sion of, to Christianity, 171; definition 
of members of, 200, 437; geographic 
distribution of, 88; government seats 
reserved for, 436-37, 438; political 
activities of, 431, 503; political affilia- 
tions of, 463, 468; population of, 88; in 
prison, 619 
schools: Anglo-Indian, 212-13; atten- 
dance at, 106; attrition from, 106, 107, 
209; church-run, 107; condition of, 
106, 112; Congress boycott of, 110; 
curriculum of, 90, 112; enrollment in, 
64, 106, 111; fees of, 111; Jain, 128; 
languages of instruction in, 34, 108, 
194; madrasa, 107; middle, 106; mis- 
sion, 107, 210, 219; Muslim, 161; pres- 
sures in, 107; primary, 106, 209; 
private, xl, 64, 107; problems in, 64; 
public, 64; rural, 194; tribal, 219; 
urban, 194, 286, 289 
science {see also research and develop- 
ment; technology), li, 358-77; brain 
drain from, 367; cooperation with 
ASEAN, 323; cooperation with China, 
534; cooperation with Soviet Union, 
544; education in, 361; English as lan- 
guage of, 194; government support 
for, 50, 363-65; in Gupta Empire, 13; 
infrastructure, 363-65; personnel, 
366; policy, xxxix, 362, 363-65; pros- 
pects in, 376-77; quality of, 377 
Science Advisory Council, 363 
Scientific Policy Resolution (1958), 362 
Scindia Steam Navigation Company, 352 
Scythian people, 11 

Securities and Exchange Board of India, 
318 

seeds: high-yield, xxxviii, 310 

Self-Employed Women's Association, 291 

Self-Re spect Movement, 485 

Sepoy Rebellion (1857-59), 35-36; ori- 
gins of, 36; response to, 566 

sepoys, 29, 565, 570; number of, 566 

servant caste. See Shudra caste 

services sector: as percentage of gross 
domestic product, 300; public sector 
control of, 304 

Seshan,T.N., 454-55 

Shah, Ghulam Mohammad, 494, 521-22 



Shahjahan: expansion under, 23-24 
Shaka people, 1 1 
Shakti, 139-40 
Shankara, 132, 175 

Shanti Niketan University: science pro- 
gram, 371 

shantytowns, 54, 286, 302 

Sharad Pawar, 535, 551 

Sharif, Mian Nawaz, 525 

Sharma, Miriam, 276 

Shastri, Lai Bahadur: death of, 51-52; 
foreign policy under, 511; President's 
Rule invoked by, 439; as prime minis- 
ter, 51 

Shatrunjaya Hills, 128 

Shekhar, Chandra, 477; personal advis- 
ers to, 512; President's Rule invoked 
by, 439; as prime minister, 447-48, 
478,512,525 

Sherpa, Chi ten, 226 

Shesha-Naga, 138 

Shillong: rainfall in, 75 

Shimla (Simla) , 69 

shipbuilding: government control of, 

304, 330; Soviet support for, 543 
Shipping Corporation of India, 351 
shipyards, 352 

Shiva, 15, 122, 138-40; images of, 138; 
incarnations of, 139; and renuncia- 
tion, 138, 139; sexual power of, 139 

Shivaji Bhonsle, 26, 481 

Shiv Sena (Army of Shivaji) , 481 , 496 

Shudra (servant) caste: in Aryan system, 
7; dharma of, 270; origins of, 267 

Shultz, George, 548 

Siachen Glacier: armed forces in, 563; 
dispute over, 72, xlvii, 522-23; negotia- 
tions over, 525 

Siddhis, 213-14 

Sikh Autonomous Region: demand for, 
491 

Sikh Gurdwara Act of 1925, 1 66 
Sikhism, 162-67; Akali mass movement 
in, 166; division within, 166; funda- 
mentalist, 176, 491-92, 608; gurus in, 
163, 164-65; inclusive nature of, 164; 
influence of, on Punjabi society, 163; 
karma in, 164; Khalsa of, 163, 166; 
leadership of, 167; life-cycle rituals, 
166; militant resistance to persecu- 
tion, 163; nirvana in, 164; origins of, 
120, 162; reincarnation in, 164; sects 



837 



India: A Country Study 



of, 162, 166, 167; shrines of, 165, 166; 
songs of, 164; spread of, 120; temples 
of, 163, 165; tenets of, 162; worship in, 
165 

Sikh khalsa, 27 

Sikhs, 27; ascetic, 162; baptism of, 163; in 
government, 121; militant movement 
of, 440, 492-93; number of, 120; occu- 
pation of Golden Temple by, 55; per- 
secution of, 24; riots against, 176, 492, 
610; surnames of, 163 

Sikkim, xlviii, 73; border with, 516; Bud- 
dhists in, 131; under constitution, 434; 
population of, 455; rural population 
of, 88; tribes in, 200 

Simla. SeeShimla 

Simla Accord (1972), 521,525 

Simla Convention (1914) , 72-73, 532 

Simon, John, 44 

Sinai Peninsula: peacekeeping forces in, 
578 

Sindh: ancient civilization in, 4; Arabs in, 

15;' unrest in, 524, 620 
Sindhi language, 182 
Singh, Arjun, 474 

Singh, Chaudhury Charan: in Janata 
government, 476-77; President's Rule 
invoked by, 439; as prime minister, 55, 
447 

Singh, Giani Zail, 491-92; as president, 
447 

Singh, Maharaja Hari, 493 
Singh, Jaipal, 220, 221 
Singh, Manmohan, 409, 449 
Singh, Ranjit, 27 
Singh, Sagat, 572 

Singh, Vishwanath Pratap (V.P.), 57-58, 
274, 456; foreign policy under, 515, 
530; no-confidence vote against, 477; 
personal advisers to, 512; President's 
Rule invoked by, 439 

Singh Sabha (Assembly of Lions), 166 

Sino-Indian war (1962) , xlvii, 51, 73, 299, 
310, 510, 542, 574-76; armed forces 
performance in, 563, 574, 581; casual- 
ties in, 576; cease-fire in, 576; interna- 
tional reaction to, 546; origins of, 574; 
State of Emergency during, 439; strat- 
egy in, 574-76 

Sino-Tibetan languages, 181; number of 
speakers of, 187, 187 

Siraj-ud-daula, Nawab, 29 



Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, 361 
Sita, 136, 142 
Siwalik Hills, 69 
Skanda, 139-40 
slavery, 219 
slaves, 213 

slums, xli, 286, 335; evictions from, 54; 

structure of life in, 286-88 
Small Farmers Development Agency, 394 
social interdependence, 240-41, 263, 

292; in families, 247, 248; in villages, 

272-73, 284 
Socialist Independence for India 

League, 44 
Socialist Party. Samajwadi Party 
social services: under five-year plans, 

311, 312 

social structure: religious influences on, 
119 

Society of Brahma. See Brahmo Samaj 
Society of Great Enlightenment. See 

Mahabodhi Society 
soil, 384, 385, 386 

Soldiers', Sailors', and Airmen's Board, 
594-95 

Somalia: peacekeeping mission in, xlix 

sorghum, 384, 385, 407, 408 

South Africa: Gandhi's work in, 42; rela- 
tions with, 519 

South Asia: as nuclear-free zone, 525, 
545, 551; relations with, 519-31 

South Asian Association for Regional 
Cooperation (SAARC) , 57, 559; fund- 
ing of, 559; members of, 559; origins 
of, 57, 523; programs of, 559; summit 
of 1988, 524 

Southeast Asia: China's influence in, 
537; relations with, 536-37; trade with, 
12, 14 

Southern Himalayas, 69 
South Korea. See Korea, Republic of 
Soviet republics, former: exports to, 331 
Soviet Union {see also Russia; Soviet 
republics, former): Afghanistan 
invaded by, xlviii, 55, 517, 523, 538-39, 

543- 44, 548; aid from, 320, 370, 426, 
510, 542; international competition 
of, 519, 547; materiel from, xlvii, 542, 

544- 45, 563; military assistance from, 
510, 543; satellites launched by, 375; 
scientific cooperation with, 544; and 
Southeast Asia, 536; space program of, 



838 



Index 



375, 544; trade with, 542, 543, 544; 
treaties with, 53, 510, 518, 533, 543, 
572; visits to, 544 

Soviet-Indian relations, xlvii, 51, 53, 510, 
537; and nonalignment, 515, 541 

space, 362; international cooperation in, 
544, 545; program, li, 373-74, 602; 
research organizations in, 373-75; sci- 
entific and technical support for, 358 

Space Commission, 373 

Special Commonwealth African Assis- 
tance Programme, 513 

Special Frontier Force, 598, 600 

Sravana Belgola, 128 

Srigeri: Hindu seat of learning at, 132 

Srinagar airport, 354 

Sri Lanka, 516; aid to, 526, 548; armed 
forces in, xlviii, 563; ethnic conflict in, 
527, 620; membership of, in SAARC, 
559; peacekeeping missions in, xlviii, 
576-78, 599, 620; refugees from, 85, 
528; and regional security, 527; rela- 
tions with, 56, 57, 509, 510, 526-28 

Standard Chartered Bank, 317 

Star TV, 357, 502 

State Farm Corporations of India, 400 

State of Emergency (see also President's 
Rule): arrests under, 445, 467, 476; 
cause for proclamation of, 439-40; 
censorship under, 445, 500; under 
Indira Gandhi, xliv, 54, 439, 467-68; 
in 1962, 439; in 1971, 439; in 1975, 
xliv, 439, 443, 445, 450, 467-68, 500, 
612; police under, 612 

states: autonomy of, 45; divisions of, 452; 
political parties in, 484; reorganiza- 
tion of, xliv, 49, 195, 215 

States Reorganisation Commission, 49, 
195; formation of Andhra Pradesh by, 
xliv, 215; request to, for Gorkhaland, 
224; request to, for Jharkhand, 220-21 

steel, xxxix, 331; earnings from, 331; 
import of, 322, 331; price controls on, 
305; production, 300, 331, 360 

steel industry, 331; development of, 331; 
government control of, 304, 330; 
investment in, 306, 312 

stock market, 318; collapse of Bombay, 
318; development of, 330; reforms, 
318 

stock scandals, 473-74 

strikes: by Dalits, 276; general, 41; in 



Jammu and Kashmir, 494; motives for, 

327; number of, 328; by pilots, 352; 

railroad, 54, 439 
student demonstrations, 216; against 

Mandal Commission, 222 
students: employment of, 109; in United 

States, 546 
subsidiary alliance system, 31 
subsidies: credit, 317; decreases in, 306; 

fertilizer, 400-401, 427; fishing, 417- 

18 

Suez Canal: peacekeeping forces in, 578 
suffrage. See voting 

sugar, 385; availability of, 382; imports 
of, 409; marketing of, 422; prices, 404; 
production of, 384, 407, 409, 422; 
shortages of, 303 

Sumer: trade with, 4 

Sun TV, 357 

Supreme Court, 449-52; Babri Masjid 
decision, 471; under constitution, 433; 
disputes of, with Parliament, 449-51; 
election laws decisions, 455; jurisdic- 
tion of, 449, 617; justices of, 449; land 
distribution decision, 449; Union Car- 
bide decision, 451 

Sur, Sher Khan, 20 

Surya, 121 

Sushruta, 14 

Sutlej River, 68; irrigation from, 68 
Swaraj Party, 44 

Sweden: in Aid-to-india Consortium, 
319; materiel from, 563 

Sweeper caste {see also Dalits): brides of, 
270; dharma of, 270; occupations of, 
237, 263-64, 267, 287-88; pollution 
of, 237; status of, 267, 269; women in, 
263-64 

Switzerland: joint research with, 376 
Syro-Malabar Church, 169-70; number 

members of, 1 71 
Syro-Malankara Church, 170; members 

of, 170, 171 



Tablighi Jamaat (Outreach Society), 
161-62 

Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, 
536 

Taiwan. See China, Republic of 
Tajikistan: relations with, 540 
Taj Mahal, 24 



839 



India: A Country Study 



Tamerlane. SeeTunur Lenk 
Tamil kingdoms, 12 

Tamil language, 15, 182, 186; broadcasts 
in, 357; native speakers of, 182; purifi- 
cation of, 186 
Tamil Nadu (state) (see also Madras) : 
agricultural growth in, 404; 
anti-Brahman movement in, 186; 
anti-Hindi riots in, 195; bha k ti tradi- 
tion in, 134; farms in, 386; fertilizer 
consumption in, 400; Green Revolu- 
tion in, 412; legislature of, 455; min- 
ing in, 342; nuclear power plant in, 
340; oil in, 338; political parties in, 
485; population growth rate in, 93; 
under President's Rule, 54; rainfall in, 
77; Scheduled Castes in, 88; secession- 
ist movement in, xliv, 228, 516; sex 
ratio in, 253; support for Sri Lankan 
rebels by, 577-78; teachers in, 107; 
temples in, 120-21, 139, 149; tribes in, 
200; universities in, 109 
Tamil people: literature of, 12, 15 
Tamil separatists: aid to, 576, 620 
Tanjore: annexed by British, 32 
Tapti River, 67, 76 
Tarapur nuclear power plant, 373 
Tashkent Declaration, 72, 521, 542, 571 
Tata, Jamsetji Nusserwanji (J.N.), 370 
Tata family, 242 

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 
361 , 376; campuses of, 376 

Tata Iron and Steel Factory, 219 

taxes: agricultural, 314-15, 421; under 
Bahmani Sultanate, 18; customs, 315; 
under Delhi Sultanate, 16, 17; direct, 
315; evasion of, 56; excise, 314, 315; 
income, 314, 315; indirect, 315; land 
revenue, 314-15; under Mughals, 21, 
24; on non-Muslims, 23, 24; as per- 
centage of gross domestic product, 
315; proposals for, 313; receipts from, 
315; reforms, 306, 315; on salt, 44; 
shared, 314, 457; on textile industry, 
33; under Vijayanagar Empire, 18; 
wealth, 315 

teachers, 107; geographical distribution 
of, 107 

tea: exports, 425-26; plantations, 384, 
488; workers, 224 

technology (see also research and devel- 
opment; science), 358-77; brain drain 



from, 367; cooperation with ASEAN, 
323; cooperation with China, 534; dis- 
coveries in, 359; education in, 361; 
government support for, 363-65; 
infrastructure, 363-65; personnel, 
366; policy, xxxix, 363-65; prospects 
in, 376-77; quality of, 377; SAARC 
program for, 559; from United States, 
546, 548-49 

Tegh Bahadur, Guru, 163 

Telangana movement, 49, 214-18, 482; 
demands of, 218; support for, 217-18; 
violence in, 214-15, 216 

Telangana People's Association (Telan- 
gana PrajaSamithi), 216-17 

Telangana Praja Samithi. See Telangana 
People's Association 

telecommunications, 300, 354—57; under 
five-year plans, 311; government con- 
trol of, xxxix, 297, 330; introduced, 
34-35; investment in, 306; licensing 
procedures, 354-55; national policy, 
354-55; as percentage of gross domes- 
tic product, 300; percentage of work 
force in, 325; research in, 366; SAARC 
program for, 559; satellite, 374-75; sci- 
entific and technical support for, 358; 
under Vijayanagar, 1 8 

Telecommunications authority of India, 
355 

telegraph, 34-35 

telephones: government control of, 304; 
number of, 355 

telephone system, 355; government con- 
trol of, 304, 355; improvements in, 56, 
355; line density, 355 

television, 290, 356-57, 501; access to, 
502; cable, 357; government control 
of, 356, 501; growth of, 501-2; influ- 
ence of, 276, 285; languages of, 198- 
99, 357; programming, 502, 503; satel- 
lite, 357, 501 

Telugu language, 15, 182, 186; in 
Andhra Pradesh, 196; native speakers 
of, 182; purity of, 197 

Telugu Desam Party. See Telugu National 
Party 

Telugu National Party (Telugu Desam 
Party): founded, 217, 486; in National 
Front, 477 

temperature (see also climate), 78-81; in 
Deccan Plateau, 78; in Himalayas, 78 



840 



Index 



temples, 15, 142; administration of, 149; 

government management of, 120-21; 

Hindu, 148-49, 152; layout of, 149; 

under Mughals, 22, 24; Sikh, 163, 165; 

under Vijayanagar, 18-19 
Territorial Army, 600 
territories: government control of, 458; 

government of, 458 
terrorism, 551; against British, 39; in 

Punjab, 167; SAARC program for, 559; 

by Sikhs, 167 
Terrorist Affected Areas (Special 

Courts) Ordinance (1984), 440 
Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Pre- 
vention) Act (1985), 440; allowed to 

lapse, 441; number arrested under, 

440-41 

terrorists: penalties for, 440 

textile industry: British taxes on, 33; cot- 
ton for, 409-10; employment in, 331; 
exports by, 322, 331, 381; as percent- 
age of gross domestic product, 297; 
price controls on, 305; production by, 
331, 360; technological developments 
in, 359 

thagi (thugee): oudawed, 33 
Thakurs: occupations of, 283 
Thakurji, 168 
Thapar,P.N.,580 

Thar Desert. See Great Indian Desert 
Thimayya, K.S.,580 

Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) air- 
port, 354 
Thomas the Aposde, 169 
Thorat, S.P.P.,580 
thugee. See thagi 

Tibet (see also Xizang Autonomous 
Region): agreement with China on 
(1954), 532; border with, 516; conflict 
with China over, 531-32; pilgrimages 
to, 533; refugees from, 85, 131, 532 

Times of India, 500 

Times of India Group, 500 

Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), 20 

Tinker, Hugh, 3 

tires: price controls on, 305 

Tiwari, Nairan Dutt, 474 

Todar Mai, 21 

Tolkappiam, 12 

Tolkappiyar, 12 

topography: and farm size, 386; of 
Indo-Gangetic Plain, 67; of offshore 



islands, 71 

tourism, 357-58; cooperation with 
ASEAN, 323; earnings from, 358; 
under five-year plans, 357; 
foreign-exchange earnings, 357, 358; 
number of visitors, 357; pilgrimage as, 
152; potential for, 222 

Trachoma Control Programme, 96 

trade {see also balance of trade; exports; 
imports), 14-15, 321-23; agricultural, 
424; with Arabs, 14; in Aryan system, 
7-8; with Britain, 28, 554; in cotton, 
28; deficit, 321-22, 324; under Delhi 
Sultanate, 16; European merchants in, 
xxxvi, 28; with European Union, 322; 
with France, 28; government regula- 
tion of, 302, 321; with Japan, 322; lib- 
eralization of, 302; with Middle East, 
15; with Netherlands, 28; with Paki- 
stan, 524; Parsis in, 171; as percentage 
of gross domestic product, 300; per- 
centage of work force in, 325; with 
Roman Empire, 12; with Russia, 545; 
in silk, 28; with Southeast Asia, 12, 14; 
with Soviet Union, 542, 543, 544; in 
spices, 27, 28; in sugar, 28; with Sumer, 
4; with United States, 322-23, 546; 
under Vijayanagar, 1 8 

Trade Unions Act (1926) , 327 

trading factories, 28, 29 

Transfer of Prisoners Act of 1950, 618 

Trans-Himalayas, 69 

transportation (see also mass transit; 
motor vehicles), xxxii, 342-54; air, 
306, 342, 352-54; airports, 342; under 
Delhi Sultanate, 16; under five-year 
plans, 310, 311, 342; of freight, 342, 
345; government control of, 297, 342; 
investment in, 306, 312, 342; mari- 
time, 351-52; of passengers, 345; as 
percentage of gross domestic product, 
300; percentage of work force in, 325; 
ports, 342; public, 152, 289, 342, 346- 
49, 350; railroads, 342, 345-46; rapid 
transit, 289, 346-49; research in, 366; 
roads, 18, 35, 306, 342, 349-50; 
SAARC program for, 559; scientific 
and technical support for, 358; urban, 
286, 289; under Vijayanagar, 18; water, 
35 

transvestite-eunuchs. See hijras 
Travels of Rama. See Ramayana 



841 



India: A Country Study 



Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation 
with Russia (1993) , 544 

Treaty of Friendship Between the Gov- 
ernment of India and the Govern- 
ment of Bhutan (1949), 530 

Treaty of Peace and Friendship with 
Nepal (1950) , 528; review of, 530; vio- 
lation of, 529-30 

Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooper- 
ation with the Soviet Union (1971), 
53, 510,518,533, 543,572 

Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of 
Nuclear Weapons (1968), 373; refusal 
to sign, 517, 545, 549, 551, 555, 601 

tribal areas: under constitution, 434 

tribal languages, 181 

tribal religions, 120, 167-69; animist, 
169; life-cycle rituals of, 168; outside 
pressure on, 168; Santal, 168, 169 

tribes (see also Scheduled Tribes) , 199- 
211; agriculture of, 202, 205; in Aryan 
system, 7; beliefs of, 210; under British 
rule, 206; and caste, 201, 268; Chris- 
tians in, 169. 177, 219; economy of, 
202-9; education in, 207-9; families 
in, 209; farming by, 201-2, 203; for- 
estry projects of; forced settlement of, 
xxxvi, 210; geographic distribution of, 
xxxvi, 87, 168, 169, 199-200, 206; 
hunting and gathering, 202, 210; 
indebtedness of, 205, 219; infringe- 
ments on, 207, 209; land ownership 
of, 203-4, 209, 219; languages of, 181, 
201, 202, 210; marriage in, 209, 210; 
missionaries to, 210-11; number of 
members of, 167, 199, 200-201 ; as per- 
centage of population, 199; political 
activities of, xliv, 432, 620; political 
organization of, 202-9; population of, 
200-201; practices of, 209-11; reli- 
gious dissention in, 221; slavery of, 
219; social organization of, 201-2; 
trade by, 203; traits of, 201; uprisings 
by, 52, 611 

Tripura: Buddhists in, 131; political par- 
ties in, 483; Scheduled Tribes in, 88; 
tensions of, with central government, 
227, 611; tribes in, 199, 200 

Tripura National Front, 611 

Tripura National Volunteers movement, 
227 

Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous Dis- 



trict Council, 227 
Tripura Tribal Youth Association 

(Tripura Upajatijuba Samiti), 227 
Tripura Upajatijuba Samiti. See Tripura 

Tribal Youth Association 
Trivandrum. S^Thiruvananthapuram 
Tughluq Dynastv (1320-1413), 16 
Tunghabadhra River basin, 18 
Turkmenistan: relations with, 540 
Tuticorin, port of, 350 
TVl. SeeDoordarshan 



Udaipur: annexed by British, 32 
Udhagamandalam (Ooty): Tata Insti- 
tute facility in, 376 
Udvada: Parsis in, 173 
Ukrainian National Space Agency, 375 
ULFA. See United Liberation Front of 
Assam 

Umavyad Dynasty (661-750), 157 
underemployment, xl, 329; in cities, 288 
unemployment, xl, 275, 328, 329, 467; in 
cities, 288; andjob creation, 306; 
social problems caused by, 496 
UNESCO. See United Nations Educa- 
tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organi- 
zation 

Union Carbide: and Bhopal accident, 
286; Supreme Court decision against, 
451 

Union Public Service Commission, 461; 

examinations, 587, 612 
Unionist Party, 44 

United Arab Emirates: oil from, 538 
United East India Company. See 

Yerenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie 
United Front (Sri Lanka) , 577 
L'nited Front coalition government, li 
United Liberation Front of Assam 

(ULFA), 488, 610 
United National Party (Sri Lanka), 577 
United Nations, 555-56; activities in, 
556; membership in, 518; peacekeep- 
ing forces, 578-79; peacekeeping 
forces in India and Pakistan, 520; 
peacekeeping missions, xlix, 556; pop- 
ulation projections, 89; resolutions on 
Jammu and Kashmir, 520 
United Nations Advanced Mission in 

Cambodia, 537 
United Nations Educational. Scientific, 



842 



Index 



and Cultural Organization 
(UNESCO) , 1 1 3; aid from, 370 

United Nations Food and Agriculture 
Organization: aid from, 426 

United Nations Security Council: 
cease-fires called by, 521, 542, 547, 
571; seat on, 556 

United Nations Transitional Authority in 
Cambodia, 537 

United News of India, 500 

United States: aid from, 319, 320, 426, 
547, 550; in Aid-to-india Consortium, 
319; Indira Gandhi's visit to, 547; 
Indian students in, 546; international 
competition of, 519, 547; investment 
from, 322-23, 546, 549; joint research 
with, 376; loans from, 324; military 
cooperation with, 551, 552, 579, 589; 
motor vehicle production, 335; naval 
installation on Diego Garcia, xlviii, 
517, 547, 551; relations of, with Paki- 
stan, xlvii, xlix, 51, 517, 523, 533, 539, 
546, 547, 550; satellites launched by, 
375; as security threat, 547, 548; space 
program of, 375; technology from, 
546, 548-49; trade with, 322-23, 550, 
552 

United States Agency for International 
Development, 320, 426, 547 

United States-Indian relations, xlvii, 51, 
320, 510, 546-53; disagreements in, 
549; military policy and, 517; non- 
alignment and, 546; obstacles to, 549- 
50, 551-52; state visits to, 548, 552 

United States Public Law 480 programs, 
320, 426 

United Trade Union Congress, 327 
Unity Pilgrimage. See Ekta Yatra 
universities, 108-110; administration of, 
109-110; admission to, 109; agricul- 
tural, 109, 395, 427; attrition from, 
109; English in, 194; enrollment in, 
108, 395; Active kinship in, 235; finan- 
cial problems of, 108; foreign students 
in, 427; government, 108; hierarchy 
in, 235; professional, 108; religious, 
108; science and technology gradu- 
ates, 366-67; science training in, 
xxxix, 367; scientific research at, 50, 
366; teaching, 109; technical, xxxix, 
109; unitary, 109 
University Grants Commission, 104 



Unlawful Activities Act, 176 
Untouchables. See Dalits 
Upanishads, 5-6, 122-23; interpretation 
of, 132 

uranium: imports of, 341; mining of, 341 

urban agglomerations, 85; public trans- 
portation in, 350 

urban areas: and caste, xxxviii, 275, 278; 
electricity in, 340; employment in, 
288; expansion of, 82, 85; families in, 
242, 289; garbage in, 287-88; growth 
of, 285; housing in, 335; languages in, 
194; lifestyle in, 233-34, 285-86; mar- 
riage in, 259, 288; middle class in, 
288-89; municipal corporations in, 
460-61; municipal councils in, 460- 
61; neighborhoods in, 289-90; per- 
centage of population in, 285; pollu- 
tion and purity practices in, 239-40; 
population in, 85, 86; poverty in, 301; 
problems in, 286; scavenging pigs in, 
286; shantytowns in, 54, 286, 302; 
slums in, 54, 286, 335; socioeconomic 
differences in, 286-89; transportation 
in, 286; types of, 85; underemploy- 
ment in, 288; unemployment in, 288; 
women in, 290-92; workers in, 328 

urbanization, xxxv, xxxviii, xl, 285; in 
Gujarat, 87; social problems caused by, 
495; in Rajasthan, 87 

urban migration, 286; accommodation 
of, 286-87; and religion, 120 

urban-rural differences, 233, 255 

Urdu language {see also Hindi): in British 
Raj, 188; geographic distribution of, 
191, 215; mutual intelligibility of, with 
Punjabi and Hindi, 184, 191; native 
speakers of, 1 82 

Usha, 121 

utilities, 300; as percentage of gross 

domestic product, 300; sewerage, 96, 

286; shortages, 302 
Uttarakhand, 221-23; area of, 221; lack 

of development in, 222; languages of, 

221 

Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (Uttarakhand 
Revolutionary Front) , 222, 223 

Uttarakhand movement: motivations of, 
221; origins of, 222 

Uttarakhand Revolutionary Front. See 
Uttarakhand Kranti Dal 

Uttarakhand Samyukta Sangharsh 



843 



India: A Country Study 



Samiti (Uttarakhand United Struggle 
Association), 223 

Uttarakhand United Struggle Associa- 
tion. See Uttarakhand Samyukta Sang- 
harsh Samiti 

Uttar Pradesh (state): agricultural 
growth in, 404; agricultural taxes in, 
421; Buddhists in, 131; caste problems 
in, 273; education in, 112, 113; elec- 
tions in, 455, 475, 481; electricity in, 
339; forestry agency in, 414; forests in, 
413; government of, 491; Green Revo- 
lution in, 411-12; Hindi in, 191; land 
reform in, 390; legislature of, 455; 
Muslims in, 155; nuclear power plant 
in, 340; political parties in, 481, 490; 
political representation in, 52; polyg- 
yny in, 243; population of, 455; pov- 
erty in, 301; Scheduled Castes in, 88; 
sex ratio in, 253; tribes in, 199; urban 
areas in, 86 

Uzbekistan: relations with, 540; Rao's 
visit to, 540 

Vaishno Devi, 144 

Vaishya (commoner) caste: in Aryan sys- 
tem, 7; dharma of, 270; origins of, 267 

Vajpayee, Atal Behari, li, 480, 515 

Vale of Kashmir, 384 

Varan asi: pilgrimage to, 152 

vama {see also caste), 7, 267; origins of, 
267 

varnashramadharma, 7, 11 
Varuna, 121 
Vayu, 121 

Vayudoot airline, 354 

Vedas, xxxv, xxxvii, 5-6, 121-22, 126; col- 
lections of, 121; language of, 185; ori- 
gins of the universe in, 122; recitation 
of, 122; science in, 359; varnas in, 267 

vendors, 301 

Venkatachaliah, Manepalli Narayanrao, 
451 

Venkataraman, Ramaswami, 535; as pres- 
ident, 447 

Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie 
(United East India Company), 28; 
founded, 28 

VHP. SeeVishwa Hindu Parishad 

Vickers and Yarrow, 588 

Victoria (queen), 36 



Videsh San char Nigam, 355 

Vietnam: aid to, 321; peacekeeping mis- 
sions in, 556; relations with, 537 

Vijayanagar (city), 18 

Vijayanagar Empire (1336-1565), 17; 
collapse of, 19; communications 
under, 18; expansion of, 18; founded, 
18; rivalry of, with Bahmani, 18; taxes 
under, 18; trade under, 18; transporta- 
tion under, 18 

villages (see also rural areas), 281-85; in 
Aryan system, 7; caste in, xxxviii, 276, 
282; class in, 276; common facilities 
in, 284; definition of, 87-88, 281; elec- 
tricity in, 339; factionalism of, 282, 
285; image of, 281; interdependence 
in, 272-73, 283-85; kinship in, 284; 
landowning in, 282; layout of, 282; lif- 
estyle in, 233; loyalty to, 283; neigh- 
borhoods of, 282; network of, 282; 
number of, 281; panchayat, 284-85; 
percentage of population in, 233, 276; 
roads in, 349; services in, 283; shop- 
keepers in, 204—5; size of, 281; wed- 
dings in, 283, 284; work ethic in, 283; 
worship in, 284 

Vindhya Range, 67, 70 

Vishakhapatnam: fishing in, 417; port of, 
350, 351; shipyards in, 352 

Vishnu, 15, 122, 135-38, 140; icons of, 
138; personalities of, 135-36, 138 

Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP— World 
Hindu Council), 175-76; and Ramjan- 
mabhumi Temple, 471, 480, 497; 
banned, 176 

Vivekananda, Swami, 175 

Vividh Bharati Service, 356 

voters: number of eligible, 454, 462; 
turnout of, 1 

voting (see also elections): anti-incum- 
bent, 498-99; polling stations for, 454, 
462 

Vritra, 121 



wages: for construction workers, 288; for 

women, 288 
Ward, William, 32 
warrior castes. See Kshatriya castes 
warriors: under Akbar, 21 
water: accepting drinks of, 238; conflicts 

over, 46, 491; quality, 63-64; resources, 



844 



Index 



46; and ritual pollution, 238; and rit- 
ual purity, 238; salinity, 398; sharing, 
398, 491, 526; shortages, 286; supply, 
308; territorial, 71; transfer, 398 

Waterbearer caste, 238; status of, 238 

Weiner, Myron, 468 

Wellesley, Richard Colley, 31 

West Bengal (state): agricultural growth 
in, 404; Buddhists in, 131; climate of, 
78; coal in, 336; education in, 112; 
elections in, 475, 481; electricity in, 
339; immigrants from, 196, 487, 610; 
land tenure in, 387; language in, 224; 
Muslims in, 155; peasant rebellion in, 
482; political parties in, xliv, 481, 483; 
political representation in, 52; refu- 
gees in, 572; Santals in, 168, 200; 
Scheduled Castes in, 88; urban areas 
in, 86 

West Bengal Official Language Act 
(1961), 224 

West Coast, 64; climate of, 78 

Western Ghats, 70; agriculture in, 385, 
386; climate of, 78 

West Germany. See Germany, Federal 
Republic of 

West Irian: peacekeeping forces in, 579 

wheat, 384, 385; area sown in, 408, 411; 
high-yield, 410, 411; prices, 404; pro- 
duction, 382, 384, 407, 408, 410-11 

White Huns. See Hunas 

White Paper on the Punjab A gitation ( 1 984) , 
524 

widows (see also marriage): remarriage 
of, 258, 264-65, 266, 270; ritual sui- 
cide of, 7, 23, 33, 265-66, 291 

Wolpert, Stanley, 3 

Woman Friend. See Saheli 

women: under Akbar, 23; in armed 
forces, 292, 568, 587, 590, 591, 600; 
and caste, 270; chastity of, 270; in civil 
service, 461; education of, 113; elite, 
250, 251; emancipation of, 50; 
employment of, 250, 251, 263, 288; 
inheritance by, 248; initiation ceremo- 
nies for, 147, 256; andjainism, 127; in 
Khasi tribe, 244; kinship ties of, 242, 
245-46; language use of, 198; literacy 
rate of, 106, 113; low-caste, 263-64; 
marriage of, 92, 194, 243, 244; murder 
of, 261, 291; Nayar, 244; Parsi, 171-72; 
in police force, 615; political influ- 



ence of, 223, 285, 291, 415, 503, 504; 
pollution in, 236; poor, 250; in prison, 
618; relations of, with men, 249-50; 
relations of, with women, 249-50; 
restrictions on, 248-49; roles of, 234, 
263; SAARC program for, 559; seclu- 
sion of, 248-51; social rank of, 247; 
status of, 92; suicide of, 261, 291; 
urban, 290-92; veiling of, 248-51; wor- 
ship by, 1 45-46 

women's associations: family planning 
activities in, 92 

women's movement, 290-92 

workers: under constitution, 435; mar- 
ginal, 325; rural, 328, 388-89; 
self-employed, 328, 394; status of, 279; 
urban, 328 

work ethic, 283 

work force (see also labor), 325-26; brain 
drain from, 326; categories of, 325; 
rural, 388-89; size of, 325 

World Bank: aid from, 426; Aid-to-india 
Consortium, 319; loans from, 324, 399 

World Bank Group: in Aid-to-india Con- 
sortium, 319 

World Hindu Council. SeeVishwa Hindu 
Parishad 

World War I, 40, 567-68; casualties of, 
567; impact of, 40; mobilization for, 
567 

World War II, 568-69; enlistment for, 
568; India's entrance into, 45, 568; 
resistance to, 45; support for, 45-46 

Xavier, St. Francis, 170 
Xizang Autonomous Region (see also 
Tibet), 531 



Yadev, Laloo Prasad, 1, 477 
Yadev, Mulayam Singh, 490 
Yama, 121 

Yamuna River, 68; dam on, 222 
Yarlung Zangbo River, 68, 69 
Yeltsin, Boris, 544 
yoga, 124, 175 
Yuezhi people, 11 

zamindari system: abolished, 388, 392; 
under British, 33; Supreme Court 



845 



India: A Country Study 



decision on, 449-50 
zamindars, 387; under Akbar, 21 
Zee TV, 357, 502 
Zhirinovsky, Vladimir V, 546 
Zhao Ziyang, 533 
Zhou Enlai, 532 

Zia ul Haq, Mohammad: death of, 524; 

talks of, with Indira Gandhi, 520, 523 
Zoroaster, 171 

Zoroastrianism {see also Parsis), 171-73; 
life-cycle rituals of, 172; geographic 
distribution of, 171; introduction of, 
120; number of followers of, 171; ritu- 
als of, 172; sacred fires of, 172; tenets 
of, 172; worship of, 172 



846 



Contributors 



Ashok Bhargava is Professor of Economics at the University of 
Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin. 

John Echeverri-Gent is Associate Professor of Government and 
Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. 

Sumit Ganguly is Professor of Political Science, Hunter Col- 
lege, and the Graduate School of the City University of 
New York. 

James Heitzman is Associate Professor of Information Science 
at Cazenovia College, Syracuse, New York. 

Doranne Jacobson is a South Asian area research consultant 
and Director of International Images, Springfield, Illinois. 

John J. Paul is Associate Professor of History, Fitchburg State 
College, Fitchburg, Massachusetts. 

John D. Rogers is Lecturer on Social Studies, Harvard Univer- 
sity, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Karl E. Ryavec, formerly an analyst at the Defense Mapping 
Agency, is a doctoral candidate, Department of Geogra- 
phy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu. 

Roxane D.V. Sismanidis is an Asian area consultant and a Pro- 
gram Officer with the United States Institute of Peace, 
Washington, D.C. 

Allen W. Thrasher is Senior Reference Librarian, Southern 
Asian Section, Asian Division, Library of Congress, Wash- 
ington, D.C. 

Robert L. Worden is head of the Regional Section, Federal 
Research Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 



847 



Published Country Studies 



(Area Handbook Series) 



550-65 


Afghanistan 


550-36 


Dominican Republic 


550-98 


Albania 




and Haiti 


550_44 


Algeria 

* ilkvl LCI 


550-52 


Fmarloi* 


550-59 


Angola 

-* ill fcWIU 


550-43 


Rcjvnt 


550-73 


jU. ^vll UAlIcX 




F1 9a1vaHnr 


550-111 


Armenia, Azerbaijan, 


550-113 


Estonia, Latvia, and 




and Georgia 




Lithuania 


550-169 


Australia 


550-28 


Ethiopia 


550-176 


Austria 


550-167 


Finland 


550-175 


Bangladesh 


550-173 


Germany, East 


550-112 


Belarus and Moldova 


550-155 


Germany, Fed. Rep. of 


550-170 


Belgium 


550-153 


Ghana 


550-66 


Bolivia 


550-87 


Greece 


550-20 


Brazil 


550-78 


Guatemala 


550-168 


Bulgaria 


550-174 


Guinea 


550-61 


Burma 


550-82 


Guyana and Belize 


550-50 


Cambodia 


550-151 


Honduras 


550-166 


Cameroon 


550-165 


Hungary 


550-159 


Chad 


550-21 


India 


550-77 


Chile 


550-154 


Indian Ocean 


550-60 


China 


550-39 


Indonesia 


550-26 


Colombia 


550-68 


Iran 


oD\J — jj 


v^ommonweaim v^ariD- 


JJu — J 1 


Tron 
11 dl| 




bean, Islands of the 


550-25 


Israel 


550-91 


Congo 


550-182 


Italy 


550-90 


Costa Rica 


550-30 


Japan 


550-69 


Cote dTvoire (Ivory 


550-34 


Jordan 




Coast) 


550-56 


Kenya 


550-152 


Cuba 


550-81 


Korea, North 


550-22 


Cyprus 


550-41 


Korea, South 


550-158 


Czechoslovakia 


550-58 


Laos 



849 





J-iCUclllUll 


550-38 


Liberia 


550-85 


Libya 


550-172 


Malawi 


550-45 


Malaysia 


550 161 

J JU— lOl 


IVldUriliiilld. 


550-79 


Mexico 


550-76 


Mongolia 


550-49 


Morocco 


550-64 


Mozambique 


550-35 


Nepal and Bhutan 


550-88 


Nicaragua 


550-157 


Nigeria 


550-94 


Oceania 


550-48 


Pakistan 



550^6 Panama 

550-156 Paraguay 

550-185 Persian Gulf States 

550^2 Peru 

550-72 Philippines 

550-162 Poland 

550-181 Portugal 

550-160 Romania 

5 50-3 7 Rwanda and B urundi 

5 50-5 1 S audi Arabia 



jjU— /U 


Senegal 


550-180 


Sierra Leone 


550-184 


Singapore 


550-86 


Somalia 


550-93 


South Africa 


jjU— yj 


Soviet Union 


550-179 


Spain 


550-96 


Sri Lanka 


550-27 


Sudan 


550-47 


Syria 


550-69 


IdllZdllld. 


550-53 


Thailand 


550-89 


Tunisia 


550-80 


Turkey 


550-74 


Uganda 


j ju— y / 


Uruguay 


550-71 


Venezuela 


550-32 


Vietnam 


550-183 


Yemens, The 


550-99 


Yugoslavia 


550-67 


Zaire 


550-75 


Zambia 


550-171 


Zimbabwe 



850 



004188-000 



